Terreur dans l’Hexagone: Genèse du djihad français
by Gilles Kepel and Antoine Jardin (Editions Gallimard, £20)
The southern French commune of Lunel, which was crowned by the international media in 2014 as the capital of French jihad (it has since been overtaken by Trappes), is worth a look. Known in medieval times for its Jewish population, a legacy of which is the surviving synagogue, and later for the manly pursuits of eeling and bull-running, the town declined in the 1960s along with the local viticulture. Encircled with housing estates, it became a down-at-heel dormitory town for nearby Montpellier. Among its attractions is a bronze statue of a local lad, Charles Ménard, who met his death at the hands of the Muslim resist ance in Ivory Coast in 1892. Ménard holds a pistol, aimed resolutely towards what is now the North African part of town.