Europe’s long age of optimism has come to a bloody end in Paris

We have values and civic structures which much of the rest of the world wish to emulate, writes Gerard Howlin

MAJOR European capitals are imperial cities. London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin have grand boulevards, triumphal arches, palaces and unrivalled treasures. But the power underpinning them is diminished.

The scale of the stage on which government is performed in European capitals is now several sizes larger than the substance.