by Ian Sebire

Something is stirring in the heart of Paris. At offices on the banks of the Seine, a team under the stewardship of entrepreneur Didier Spade are realising a long held dream, to build a new France. The name is emotive. The France of 1962 was arguably the definitive ship of state of the post war era, her symbolic significance perhaps exaggerated because of the fractured nation she represented. The pathos of her withdrawal from service and subsequent lay-up remains deeply embedded in the collective psyche and even forty years on there is an aching, a longing, that has never been extinguished.