Andrew responds to Romney’s highly embellished anecdotes from his mission years:
Why would Romney go out on a limb like that – when it could easily be disproven by an enterprising reporter?
Why does Romney ever tell bald-faced lies? After all, this is a man who has made the non-existent “apology tour” the rhetorical centerpiece of his presidential campaign. For some reason, he even managed to say something untrue about his real first name during the national security debate last month. It’s tempting to say that he has reinvented himself so thoroughly that he can no longer remember what is true and what isn’t, and he has absorbed and appropriated so many new positions over the years that it all gets jumbled together and re-mixed according to whatever the political need of the moment happens to be. It’s easy to lose track after the fourth or fifth incarnation. More likely, he is so contemptuous of the people he tells these lies to that he never thinks he will be found out.
BarryD 
According to the Telegraph article you linked:
“Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. . .Mr Romney moved into the building following a stay in Bordeaux, after being promoted to assistant to the president, Duane Anderson. He arrived in the spring of 1968, weeks before Paris erupted into riots, and returned to the US that December. ”
According to Wikipedia:
“In July 1966, Romney left for 30 months in France as a Mormon missionary, a traditional duty that his father and other relatives had done.[10][24][25] He arrived in Le Havre with ideas about how to change and promote the French Mission, while facing physical and economic deprivation in their cramped quarters.[25][26] Rules against drinking, smoking, and dating were strictly enforced.[26] Like most individual Mormon missionaries, he did not gain many converts, with the nominally Catholic but secular, wine-loving French people proving especially resistant to a religion that prohibits alcohol.[10][25][26][27] He became demoralized, and later recalled it as the only time when “most of what I was trying to do was rejected.”[25] In Nantes, Romney was bruised defending two female missionaries against a horde of local rugby players.[26] He continued to work hard; having grown up in Michigan rather than the more insular Utah world, Romney was better able to interact with the French.[17][26] He was promoted to zone leader in Bordeaux in early 1968 and subsequently became assistant to the mission president in Paris, the highest position for a missionary.”
So Wikipedia tells us that Romney spent 30 months on his mission in France while the Telegraph article focuses solely on the six months he spent in Paris after being elevated to assistant to the mission president. That comes to 1/5 of his total mission, but the Telegraph states that “the Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion.” In my book, 1/5 does not amount to a “significant portion.” The Telegraph subhead also offers up the highly misleading ” Much of Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon missionary in France was not as poor or arduous as he has claimed.” Much?