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“... world events for posterity’ – a generous definition of journalism – was probably Christine de Pisan, who wrote The Book of Fayttes Armes and of Chivalrye at the beginning of the 15th century. Sebba’s first study, however, is Jessie White, a passionate republican and a friend of Garibaldi, who proposed to cover the events of the Risorgimento ...”

“... Nine hundred years ago, a celebrity philosopher fell in love with his star student and seduced her. Peter Abelard’s once brilliant lectures grew tepid, while his love songs placed the name of Heloise on every tongue. Passionate letters flew, and the Parisian gossip mill went into overdrive – until pregnancy, as so often, betrayed the secret ...”

“... months longer, Joe Biden would have been able to nominate her successor; instead that privilege fell to Donald Trump. To avoid something like this happening again, political pressure grew on the 83-year-old Breyer to retire while the Democrats hold the presidency and fifty seats in the Senate, whose members confirm the appointment of presidential nominees ...”

“... scientifically – should never be seen again. But then, that’s what they thought before 1962.Christine Corton’s excellent book explores three questions: how people accounted for London fog, what they did about it, and how it became such an enormous, apparently inexhaustible cultural resource and metaphor. Liability to fog has ultimately something to do ...”

“... is still something awful in letters such as the one written in 1938 to his estranged daughter, Christine, which is full of complaint at the wrongs done to ‘my high character and great kindliness of nature’, and advances the pitiful threat that ‘when I die, the whole situation will be open to public view and you will be involved in immense ...”

“... and intellectual terrorism. The same is true of the Buci-Glucksmann and Sassoon volumes. Christine Buci-Glucksmann’s study, especially, can be seen as a mighty struggle for its own emancipation from the spiderous idiom and attitudes which invaded Marxism in the 1970s – yet the struggle is expressed, inevitably, in the very terms she wishes to ...”

“... were actively seeking to entrap people like Ivanov, the Soviet military attaché who was sharing Christine Keeler’s favours with Profumo. Summers and Dorril show just how biased and disreputable Denning’s report was. Their book came out in 1987 and no amount of amiable self-deprecation can let Deedes get away with pretending that it doesn’t ...”

“... of autofictional writing on abuse and the age gap, of which Marguerite Duras’s The Lover and Christine Angot’s Incest are the most famous examples. In the narrative, Springora refers to Matzneff using the initial ‘G.’ – though it is unmistakably him – while she refers to herself sometimes as ‘V.’, which has the opposite effect of making her ...”

“... Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Like millions of Americans, I listened to Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a story about something painful, squalid and chilling that had happened to her when she was fifteen. Her story reminded me of Elena’s book tour, and my own: a grown woman having to appear ...”

“... it in Spirit in Exile. In the 1950s Jannice Henry, an 18-year-old doctor’s daughter from Surrey, fell in love with her father’s locum, Neil Micklem. Their affair lasted for years; Jannice hoped it would end in marriage. It did not. She married instead a 30-year-old advertising copywriter called Peter Porter. He was an Australian immigrant in London, and ...”

“... days ago: 12,839 positive; 2249 new cases; 1258 recovered; 1016 dead. On Thursday, 12 March, Christine Lagarde ‘flunked her first major test as president of the European Central Bank’, as Fortune put it, when she said ‘we are not here to close spreads,’ implying the ECB wouldn’t buy Italian government debt. It had the opposite effect from the ...”

“... concern in French intellectual life with the status of women predated the Enlightenment. In 1405, Christine de Pizan mounted a defence of women’s historical achievements in The Book of the City of Ladies. In 1673, François Poulain de la Barre, a Catholic priest and disciple of Descartes, published De l’égalité des deux sexes, deploying Cartesian doubt ...”

“... chair got tangled in some wires, and director Jean Boyer was cross about the interruption. But he fell respectfully silent when he recognised Colette, and shooting was halted while he went over to pay his respects. During that interaction and the time it took to get her chair sorted out, Colette studied the activity with her usual curiosity ... A girl in the ...”

“... you pull your coat, you know you’re going to get soaked. In England, ever since Wyndham Lewis fell out with Roger Fry in 1914, ‘Bloomsbury’ has been a word that raises more hackles than hopes. To suppose that 85 years later the derisive clichés it provokes might make way for a rethink is to underestimate the tenacity of cultural stereotypes and the ...”

“... Wobegon tend to worry about the following things. Is it time to put the storm windows up? Will Christine and Keith make it through the snow for Thanksgiving? Why does my neighbour spend all his time in that poky little shed in back of his garage? Would TV ownership reduce my chances of being one of the Elect? If I go out and pee in the snow, will the stuff ...”