This is a slightly revised text of a talk delivered in front of the famous English-speaking bookstore in Paris, Shakespeare and Company, on 10 August 2009 to celebrate the publication of the paperback, Metrostop Paris: History from the City’s Heart (London: John Murray, 2009).

The talk focused on ’the thirteenth chapter that was never published: Metrostop Cité — The Impossible Love of Abelard and Heloise’. This medieval love story has long been famous. But the last few years have brought to light facts about both Abelard and Heloise which make their love affair appear almost contemporary. And Gregor Dallas adds his own twist to the tale.

Photographs courtesy of Lauren Goldberg.

This lively interview was made by Rhiannon Brown, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC’s) programme Artworks, of Gregor Dallas, author of Metrostop Paris. It was broadcast on ABC on 10 August 2008.
The programme concentrates on two Metrostops in the book. Metrostop Châtelet-Les Halles is the site of the huge nineteenth-century iron-and-glass food pavilions that were eventually pulled down in the early 1970s. Dallas describes what was there — through the eyes of Emile (…)

Gregor Dallas is interviewed on ’Face Off’, France 24, 27 October 2008 on the European economy at the moment of crisis.
For two more recent appearances on France 24, see the following links:
’Face Off’ — On the Labour leadership crisis, 8 June 2009.
’The Debate’ — On the police and race relations in France and in Britain, 1 July 2009.

John Aubrey, antiquarian, was born in 1626 in Wiltshire. He lived through the Civil War while an undergraduate at Oxford. At the Restoration of Charles II he was still a young man. He died in 1697, during the reign of William and Mary. Patrick Garland’s adaptation for the theatre was drawn from Aubrey’s masterpiece, the Book of Lives, a collection of scholarly information, scandalous gossip and tales about people he knew or heard about during a lifetime spent living in the houses and (…)