Best Eaten Cold

Alain Finkielkraut needs a new name. Al Falco? If the most interesting of the recent French philosophers is ever to make an international impact, he can't be called Alain Finkielkraut. For one thing, "Finkielkraut" doesn't even sound French. For another, he has a one-part, unhyphenated first name. As things are, the distinctly less original Bernard-Henri Levy appears in open-necked splendour on American talk-shows. Not only is Levy's latest book displayed in the vitrine of Sonia Rykiel's boutique in the Boulevard Saint Germain, it is read on the lawn at Berkeley by beautiful female students dreaming enviously of his luxuriant hair-style.