Fanfare and flyovers as France celebrates Bastille Day

Fanfare and flyovers marked France’s Bastille Day celebrations as a military parade marched down the streets of Paris beneath clouds of red, white and blue smoke while planes flew overhead. Held every year on 14 July, the national holiday commemorates the storming of the Bastille fortress in 1789, a pivotal moment of the French Revolution. President Emmanuel Macron stood alongside fellow European leaders, including the United Kingdom’s Sir Keir Starmer and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, as troops from Ukraine and its ‘Coalition of the Willing’ allies passed in review.