The company that is doing the conversions employs, among others, alcoholics, drug-addicts, former prisoners - people who are generally considered unemployable.

There is some point in looking back into the lives of our forebears and seeing how a few French people, who now belong within one frame simply because of the chance of marriages down the generations, experienced the period. I took such a look at the ancestors of my sons.

From 1983 to 1986, Bernard Gauthier was Prefect of Police for the Nord Departement of France. He writes in a personal capacity.by Bernard Gauthier