It’s not easy being an outsider in a country that’s living on the edge

Perhaps Islamic terrorism is a globalised commodity that anyone anywhere can simply download off the internet, writes Gerard Howlin

YOU find unexpected connections in surprising places. Above the beach at Puys, outside Dieppe in Normandy, there is a small inn called Auberge du Vieux Puits, meaning the “inn of the old well”. I was there for lunch last Sunday and it was the birthday of one among our small company. The room was full of faces that would look familiar in Wexford. Their Norman forefathers landed on the beach of Baginbun with Raymond le Gros, in the second and decisive landing of 1170.

The beach at Puys