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“... centre of the world. Why shouldn’t Havana invoke Washington as Washington invokes Rome? As in France after the Revolution, the identification of the US with ancient Rome was avowedly republican, but it also had to do with empire. France’s empire soon came and went, but America’s has only grown over the years, and ...”

“... in the aftermath of François Hollande’s botched presidency.As well as being remembered in France as the great orator of the left, Jaurès is still seen across the political spectrum as a champion of ‘republican values’. In 2014, on the centenary of his assassination on the eve of the First World War, he was honoured by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ...”

“... death in 1969. That year came two editions of the Memoirs, one edited by Pierre Citron, the other David Cairns’s translation. Critical editions of Berlioz’s other writings, and his Correspondance Générale, are well advanced; critical and analytical scholarship has moved into top gear in Germany, the United States and Britain; the New Berlioz ...”

“... Trying to define Romanticism has always been a typically Romantic activity, especially in France. The word romantisme first appeared in the year of Napoleon’s coronation (1804) and soon began to acquire a large retinue of definitions. Mme de Staël associated it with the misty, melancholy North and declared Romanticism to be primarily an effect of climate ...”

“... matter how apparently unyielding, seems to have gone unmarshalled. Dickens made several trips to France in the early 1860s, and though ‘there is no proof that it was Nelly who took Dickens to France the summer of 1862, or that the reason for her being in France was that she was ...”

“... for the city’s refineries and for export to Holland and Germany as well as to other parts of France. The merchants of Bordeaux were at the heart of the imperial system, providing the credit that facilitated the West India trade and writing the bills of exchange that criss-crossed the Atlantic. They dealt with the region’s celebrated wines as well as ...”

“... feel – as did many writers in the 18th century – that, until the arrival of the fully-formed David, their achievements failed, with only rare exceptions, to match up to the expectations aroused by the prestige with which they were surrounded. The reasons for this failure in a society so extraordinarily rich in artistic talent should be a matter of ...”

“... 1915. In that era of large families, he was one of five of my close forebears who fought in France during the First World War. Three wrote letters and reflections about the trench experience, of which I have originals or copies. They offer a corrective, for me a significant one, to a popular myth about the Western Front, sustained by several bestselling ...”

“... of Africa or opposed the Suez invasion in a famous editorial that described Britain and France as gangsters. What I remember were the things that made us laugh: the column by Paul Jennings that had a tongue-twister about ‘tuskless rustics eating crustless Ruskets’; the strip cartoon by Jules Feiffer; the witty reviews by Kenneth Tynan of plays ...”

“... flagging and her health failing, she fled the country in August 1815, and went into exile in France. Ill, impoverished and friendless, she was dead within less than a year. The Duke of Clarence seems not to have mentioned this to anybody, and in July 1818, he married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. The details of Mrs Jordan’s life have been well known for ...”

“... have cast a glance at Maurice Agulhon’s work on republican imagery and symbolism in 19th-century France, and speculated as to why the French put up statues to principles and ideals, while the English commemorate princes and idols. All in all, this is a well-meaning but slightly claustrophobic book: rather like Albert himself. ‘A town hall,’ Sir Charles ...”

“... The former wanted the money to make himself king of Castile, the latter to lead expeditions to France (the one he did lead in 1380 was an expensive fiasco). This resentment was the cause of the murder of Sudbury, a former chancellor, and Hales, the king’s treasurer, in London; in the country the targets were often the poll tax commissioners and the ...”

“... steps like effigies to some exhausted god of creation.’ Into this quiet world rides a knight. David Knight is a handsome lieutenant with hair in ‘Cellinian frescoes and fashionable porticoes over his dented brow’. He carves their names into a tree. ‘David, ...”

“... Wellington (her pen as mighty as his sword); Gash’s Peel (a peerless study of a baronet); Lord David Cecil’s Melbourne (one patrician beguilingly evoking another); Blake’s Disraeli (champagne and epigrams all the way); and Marquand’s MacDonald (Fame is the spur stood on its head). But many prime ministers have fared less well: Chatham and Lord John ...”

“... sooner and on a larger scale in some areas than others: it reached its furthest extent in France, England and some German and Hungarian-speaking regions of Europe. It was slowest in Russia and Russian Poland – though even there it had advanced substantially by the First World War. To write the history of the Jews in modern Europe is, therefore, like ...”