Edith Piaf was born in 1915 in Belleville, a poor district of Paris which she forever regarded as her spiritual home, and she became closely identified with the vibrant creative spirit of the city in the 1930s and 40s. Paris at that time was the intellectual and artistic centre of the world, home to composers Ravel and Stravinsky, artists Matisse, Leger and Picasso and writers Proust, Gide and Cocteau. Cocteau became utterly absorbed by Piaf and described her impact on him with unalloyed wonder: “Every time she sings you have the feeling she’s wrenching her soul from her body for the last time.”