Why does nobody believe me when I say I am going to Paris to work? No, not shopping, I pronounce confidently, it’s a research trip.

‘Ha, ha! Have a nice holiday,’ they say as they wave me off. If I told people I was going to Berlin or Edinburgh, or even Geneva, they wouldn’t make the same automatic assumption.

Is it because of the latest shenanigans with President Hollande and his motorcycle helmet that people assume Paris is code for doing something else? Or is it historic, this attitude to Paris? Certainly a German soldier posted to Paris in 1941 rejoiced. Of course it was better than the eastern front. It had food, women, perfume and brothels.

A tiny part of me, of course, doesn’t mind the teasing. It’s why I am writing the book I am about women in Paris in the 40’s, both during the war and after it. I knew instinctively when I proposed the idea that what de Gaulle managed to do after the war for the whole of France was writ large in Paris. He ensured that the idea of Paris, the notion of a city, depended upon its reputation as a hub of beauty, gastronomy and fashion – and he succeeded magnificently. Paris is exciting. It is a breathtakingly beautiful city whose buildings, if not its honour, remained virtually intact after the war. The brothels may have been closed down (more or less…at any rate they were made illegal in 1946) but, seventy years after the liberation, Paris is still the city of romance par excellence. Parisian women look stunningly fashionable, just as they tried to do throughout the War.

Well, mostly they do.  The everyday reality is different for anyone who travels beyond the centre to the suburbs. Try telling anyone who spends days in the subterranean enclosure that is the Bibliotheque Nationale or the National Archives, which are located miles outside the centre in a desolate part of the city,  that you are going for a romantic holiday. The train from the airport to the centre – for those who do not use Eurostar – comes past a number of dreary suburbs including the hellish Drancy. How could anyone live in a town whose name is a byword for the evil perpetrated on French soil?  The metro is often crowded full of thousands of jostling, unfashionable, ordinary women going about their daily business as well as beggars and thieves just as in every European city. Tragically people throw themselves under trains here just as they do in London. I have noticed however that French seem not to treat the metro as a convenient place to have a smelly curry in the way do in London.

So what about the shopping?  Well, there are some fabulous shops in Paris, boutiques which are not part of any chain selling wildly original objects displayed eye catchingly. There is a sweet smelling artisan chocolatier or patisserie on every street corner and an ‘artisan’ bag or belt maker on several others. Haute cuisine and haute couture are put within the tempting reach of every miserable passer-by. Right next door to my hotel is a fabulous designer hat shop but so far the prices have kept me just a window shopper. I just look longingly at the beautiful designer shops and popup shops and the unusual –objects- which-I-really- don’t-need-shops. I even found myself stopping outside a designer spectacle shop today and feeling deeply covetous. So far, other than the occasional gift, I have kept away.

But yesterday my resolve cracked as my research took me to a new part of town – the Comedie Francaise archives are located not only right in the centre of town but in the Palais Royale, nestling among the historic arcades full of designer boutiques. The writer Colette lived here and ever watchful had a good view of several unsavoury comings and goings during the War. My hands were dangerously cold, I decided. I had to have some gloves, some Parisian gloves I convinced myself. And as my cosseted fingers recovered their feeling I recognised that these fabulously expensive gloves are just softer, sleeker, longer more supple than any gloves I have ever bought in London. No I am not acquiring a Parisian shopping habit. They are only gloves after all.