Jude Cook, “Paris On the Page.” The London Magazine, December 2020-January 2021. Posted on Jude’s Substack, Overcooked, on 30th April 2026:

“‘We’ll always have Paris,’ as Bogart famously drawled to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, alluding both to their own affair and the city’s enduring quality of romantic vivacity; its embodiment of Eros versus the forces of Thanatos, in this case represented by the Second World War. He doesn’t have to elaborate on what Paris symbolises; its superabundance of light and love, its promise of amorous adventure. Not many cities are so neatly metonymic. Yet the title of Andrew Gallix’s excellent anthology of Parisian writing, We’ll Never Have Paris (2019), seems to sum up the experience of writing a Parisian novel more accurately. It catches the tantalising, ineffable quality of the city, one that becomes more apparent as you try to capture it on the page. Writing about Paris — like writing about London or New York — can feel like a thankless task. As Hemingway said, ‘There is never any ending to Paris’…”