Marks & Spencer is in talks to open a store on the Champs-Elysées as part of its latest European strategy put in place by its new chief executive.

Notebook

The great necrocracy's hieroglyphs reach over the millennia with images of death invoking ceremony, celebration and pleasure

Rant

Only in France, a country where even adverts for compost mulch include gratuitous nudity, could a high-heel race signify the apex of egalitarianism. Every year in Paris, teams of women jostle each other on the edge of a giant pink crashmat, before hurtling up and down it dressed as fairies and nurses in teetering stilettos.

The world's greatest sprinter lets rip at sloppy journalists and jealous rivals

For much of the world he's the poster boy of Impressionism, but back home he's widely derided as banal. Now a Paris exhibition hopes to change all that

Before Sergei Diaghilev, it was possible to dismiss ballet as a frivolous excuse for showing pretty girls and dresses without anybody getting too upset. The Ballets Russes changed all that. Formed by Diaghilev in 1911, this extraordinary company unleashed a 30-year whirlwind of scandal, celebrity, glamour and innovation that is now being celebrated in a major exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Laurent Fignon twice won the Tour de France but will be forever remembered for the one he lost – and by how much. On the final day of the 1989 Tour the Frenchman seemed assured of victory, only to lose to his American rival, Greg LeMond, by a heart-breaking eight seconds, the closest margin in the race's history.

The contralto Maureen Forrester gained worldwide fame as a recitalist and concert singer during the early part of her long career. Noted particularly for her magnificent interpretations of Mahler's songs and other vocal music, she also sang Brahms, Dvorák and Bach with equal facility, while her rich, opulent voice, always under perfect control, was agile enough for Handel's most florid music. She came to opera relatively late, but from the mid-1960s onward, while continuing her concert and recital tours, she also took one or two operatic engagements a year, mostly in North America.

Crisis? What crisis? Judging by the flood of super-rich foreign tourists into France this summer, the recession is over, at least for some.

The French capital has plenty of grand hotels to choose from, but small is beautiful too – as revealed by these stunning properties taken from the new 'Mr & Mrs Smith Hotel Collection: France'

A magnificent sprint win for Mark Cavendish on the Champs-Elysées was not quite enough to earn the Manxman victory in the sprinters' green jersey competition, but yesterday's 15th stage win of his career in the Tour de France was still a dream ending to this year's race for the Briton. Cavendish sped across the finish line in Paris with a good 20 metres of daylight between himself and his nearest rival, Alessandro Petacchi of Italy, and New Zealander Julian Dean.

Lance Armstrong wanted to end his Tour de France career on a winning note. Instead, his chances of victory long since gone, he was denied even the dignified exit he must have hoped for yesterday when, as the final stage of his final Tour was getting under way, officials told him and his team-mates to stop riding and change their kit.