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“... a sign of our loss of authentic memory, as it was for Pierre Nora in his monumental survey of the French construction of a national past, Les Lieux de mémoire. If we accept that there is no architecturally embodied identity of a nation or people, that our current historical existence is not vitally wrapped up in relics of an imagined past except as ...”

“... jokes were excellent, his good humour seemingly unsinkable and, single-handedly, he rejuvenated French comedy, retaining a framework of farce and weaving traditional plots, satire and spectacle into a fully integrated form of comic theatre. All this suggests a confident Molière, well equipped to handle the controversy he appears to have courted. Purists ...”

“... The prisoners held in the USSR ‘came home’ in 1955. By the summer of 1957 the British and French had closed down their prisons in Werl and Wittlich; the Americans released the last of their war criminals from Landsberg in May 1958. Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach remained in Spandau, under joint four-power auspices, and a few ...”

“... republicanism’s loss of innocence in the face of the Terror. With the collapse of hopes in the French republic, English liberals like Browning and Clough – one might add Landor, who deserved inclusion here – looked increasingly to the Italian cause. One of Paulin’s main aims is ‘to redeem Clough from the neglect which his work has suffered’, and ...”

“... National Bank and the Qatari Tourism Authority, have sponsored Paris Saint-Germain since the French club was bought outright in 2013 by the state agency Qatari Sports Investments. From Paris, Qatar has been conducting a steady and very expensive assault on the heights of European football, while at the same time gaining an influential place in ...”

“... From the outset, ambiguity enfolds The Plum in the Golden Vase, David Tod Roy’s translation of the first volume of the monumental 16th-century Chinese novel Chin P’ing Mei. The title, as he explains in his Introduction, is a ‘multiple pun’ composed of one ideogram each from the names of the three principal female protagonists ...”

“... in the Lebanon, there are few more practical ultra-modern weapons available on earth. Our French friends at the Elysée can wring their hands and protest their loyalty to Britain. But just as the technicians of Aerospatiale-Dassault, when publicly prevented at Orly Airport from going themselves to Argentina, simply got on the telephone from Bourges to ...”

“... noble nature was intentional. ‘Staffage’ is the word for human and animal extras, I find, and David Teniers the Younger, whose work Turner admired, is offered as the source of their plain looks. Whatever his narrative intention, foreground accents – not just people, but boats, buoys, goats, ducks – are important parts of the visual machinery. They ...”

“... the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly (which was later to serve as one of London’s first cinemas). Other French paintings, including a version of David’s Coronation of Napoleon, with its dazzling profusion of documentary details, were shown separately in London in the same period. By the mid-century touring exhibitions were ...”

“... Jean​ Jaurès was a deserving child of the French republican meritocracy. An outstanding pupil from the town of Castres, near Toulouse, he came top in the entrance exam for the École Normale Supérieure, where he specialised in philosophy. In 1885, at the age of 25, he was elected as a Republican deputy for his home town ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”

“... romantic, reactionary, revolutionary, mystic, miser and indefatigable philanderer: without him French literature, French politics of the 19th century are unimaginable. The scope of his ambition, the range of his genius, the vastness of his output, the extent of his appetite, the audacity of his opportunism and the ...”

“... an internal stairway and tiptoed down to the courtyard, where a carriage was waiting for him. The French ambassador to the Holy See, the duc d’Harcourt, remained alone in the chamber for 45 minutes, speaking in a loud voice so that no one would suspect that the pope had left the building. At the church of SS Marcellin and Peter, the pope’s coach was met ...”

“... de Meun, on discovering the letters they had exchanged in religious life, translated them into French and popularised their story in his Roman de la Rose. One of his characters praises Heloise as peerless among women, but uses their tale all the same to warn men against marriage. A gothic legend recounts that when Heloise was buried beside Abelard, already ...”