Arnaud Lagardère – must be related to Christine, of the International Monetary Fund, right?

Bernard-Henri Lévy is calling for France and the West to intervene in Syria as his new documentary The Oath of Tobruk debuts at the Cannes Film Festival tonight.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin carved up Europe at Yalta. Reagan and Gorbachev almost gave up their nukes at Reykjavik. Some summits make history. The personal chemistry between leaders can produce extraordinary and unpredictable outcomes. They also produce great pictures: the walks in the woods and the fireside chats.

Francois Hollande became president of France today in a ceremony steeped in tradition, taking over a country worried about Europe's future and pledging to make it a fairer place.

New political map promises easy win for Socialists and allies in parliamentary elections

François Hollande and his partner, Valerie Trierweiler, face two pressing questions which usually dog much younger couples. Should they get married? And where will they live?

After a bruising, and occasionally nasty, election campaign, France’s future and ousted presidents stood solemnly, and movingly, side- by-side today at a ceremony to commemorate the end of World War Two in Europe.

In his last state ceremony as France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy led commemorations today in Paris marking the end of World War II in Europe, standing side-by-side with the man who ousted him from power.

Carla Bruni Sarkozy may have her detractors but never let it be said that she doesn’t know how to dress.

Renewed uncertainty over Europe's ability to deal with its spawning debt crisis following elections in Greece and France hammered stock markets today, with the main exchange in Athens down a massive 8%.

Nicolas Sarkozy was a victim of the financial crisis – and his own craving for power

France's presidential election was a close-run affair, far closer than the polls had suggested through most of the long and often ill-tempered campaign. So, while François Hollande's victory gives France its first Socialist President for 16 years and makes Nicolas Sarkozy France's first one-term President for more than a generation, it represents something less than the historic turnaround Mr Hollande's supporters rushed to claim. France, like so many European countries, remains finely balanced between left and right. A crisis such as the one that it, and the Continent as a whole, faces, is not resolved by an election; in some ways, an election merely highlights the divisions.