Deborah Telford plunges into polishing up her command of French with practical lessons in a Provence village.

There's nothing like a beautifully shot film to make you feel like up-and-leaving the very next day. Here are five examples that show off their stunning destinations to full effect.

Anthony Peregrine sees the best of Nice, a magnet to the rich for centuries.

After his jaunt with royalty, Prime Minister John Key will return to business with a thud tonight.

This amazing GoPro cam footage captured some amazing scenes as it was placed upon an eagle flying through Mer de Glace glacier and Montenvers Railway on northern slopes of the Mont Blanc massif, in the French Alps.

In a televised address, French President Francois Hollande says he hasn't ruled out the "military option" against Syria.

An 84-year-old man has been killed near Paris after an elephant belonging to a local circus escaped from its pen and hit him with its trunk.

An enormous hand-sculpted rock carving in France nearly six years in the making could be the largest work of Maori art in the Northern Hemisphere.

At a remote spot deep in the French countryside, Britons Bob and Diane Kirkwood have created an eco-friendly refuge that is like taking a step back in time.

Judges have described Dominique Strauss-Kahn as "king of the party" and the "linchpin" of soirees with prostitutes that resembled "carnage on a pile of mattresses", in a damning indictment of the disgraced former International Monetary Fund chief.

Paris has launched a new kind of tourist guide: not a guide for tourists, but a guide to different types of tourists.

Three stylish women, frequent visitors to France, share their favourite Parisian haunts.

Fire has ravaged a Qatari-owned 17th-century mansion in the heart of Paris.

When Francois Hollande became France's leader, it was with the insistence that he was a man of the people, who despised patriotic pomp and shunned the splendours of the Elysee Palace and its use as a political prop.

France's Government spies on its own citizens in the same way as the United States, it was claimed yesterday.

Although I spend lengthy periods every year living in a town of about 12,000 people in southern France I sometimes forget the two, sometimes three-hour lunch.

The French are increasingly shunning the traditional baguette, opting instead for cereal at breakfast, biscuits at tea time and pasta and rice dinners.

The Eiffel Tower's lifts have ground to a halt as an industrial dispute over security and working conditions brought workers at the Paris monument out on strike.

Step into the catacombs and find a fascinatingly grisly scene, writes Trudy Lefeber.

Funded by the European Union to the tune of $140 million, a deft bit of reinvention has turned France's drug and crime epicentre into the nation's Capital of Culture. Jenna Hand goes along for the ride.

Of all European countries, you might have thought, France would have taken gay marriage in its stride.