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“... and conceivably out of patriotism the British members of a privateer took the ship away from the French members, sailed her to Nevis and renamed her the Blessed William. Whether the crew elected Kidd captain in the usual democratic buccaneering way or whether he was appointed by the governor of Nevis makes little odds, for the men would never have sailed ...”

“... decided to give another writer he’d spotted a chance to fill the gap in the market. He wrote to Patrick O’Brian, who duly signed a contract headed: ‘Untitled novel about an 18th-century naval adventurer’.Hill’s attention had been caught by a chance reading of The Golden Ocean (1956), a novel for teenagers which made it clear that O’Brian knew his ...”

“... and Juliet (1956) could have been about Salisbury Court, the London home in the early 1580s of the French Ambassador to the Court of Elizabeth I, Michel de Castelnau, seigneur de Mauvissière, an establishment described by John Bossy as ‘zany, convivial and leak-ridden’. Bossy asks us to take our places at the dinner table at Salisbury Court in November ...”

“... The same week as that unwanted encounter with European produce, a near disaster was suffered by 23 French holidaymakers, some of whom suffered facial cuts as their Dover-bound coach collided with a Danish TIR lorry at Harbledown. On another occasion the A2 was blocked when a ‘Turkey-bound’ lorry loaded with machinery parked at the side of the road, then ...”

“... three hundred-page novel written without the e which is by far the most frequently used letter in French. The counterpart to La Disparition was Les Revenentes (1972), a lipogrammatic novel in a, i, o and u – e being the only permitted vowel. No single word in La Disparition can reappear in Les Revenentes, while many of the most familiar words in the ...”

“... an extra life: not a holiday or vacation, but a different way of being ourselves, not least in French, because we always become someone different when we speak another language.My parents retired to the suburbs of south-west London. Towards the end of her life, in Kingston Hospital, my mother said from her bed, with that mix of disorientation and clarity ...”

“... When​ Jean-Patrick Manchette was asked about his first encounter with detective fiction, he mentioned a scene from Black Wings Has My Angel by the American writer Elliott Chaze. Originally published in 1953, this obscure lovers-on-the-run thriller was only available, until recently, in French translation ...”

“... he considered that their mimetic activities would tend to undermine the social order. Modern French critical thought, however, has insisted that ‘realist’ writing is no longer subversive. The ‘scandalous’ texts with their sexual machinery which excited so much censorious attention in the 19th century (and in England much more recently) now stand ...”

“... On the last page​ of his book about his father, Patrick Cockburn writes that Claud ‘disbelieved strongly in the axiom about “telling truth to power”, knowing that the rulers of the earth have no wish to hear any such thing. Much more effective, he believed, is to tell truth to the powerless so they have a fighting chance in any struggle against the big battalions ...”

“... It is true that he moved on to the Crescent, which though called a frigate was in fact a captured French privateer; and from this very modest height he sank to the Ranger, a snow that carried only eight little three-pounders and that harried smugglers off the Isle of Man. In 1776, having served his time as a midshipman, he passed his examination for ...”

“... are voiced by Raphael Faber, supposedly a leading young Cambridge don. Faber, who teaches the French Symbolists and abominates George Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, is a poet whose art is one of ‘material reference’ deprived of (apparent) spiritual meaning. He is also a Jew, whose male relatives were all killed in the Holocaust, and a recognisable donnish ...”

“... conjunction of beauty, forlorn love, madness and premature death’ was irresistible to the French. Through her, Shakespeare suddenly became a central part of French consciousness and the preoccupation of writers such as Hugo and Dumas. The young Berlioz worshipped her from afar, but so intensely that he nearly had a ...”

“... would be interesting to know how many British university libraries shelve Beckett’s books under French, not Irish, literature. Traitors sell their nationality, whereas writers, if they are well-known, find themselves trading on their nationality whether they like it or not. Neither traitors nor imaginative writers can ever fully discard what we choose to ...”

“... a participant in the often menacing jollifications which accompanied the finalisation of an Anglo-French treaty and a marriage alliance with the house of Navarre. In early August the French King made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, which carried the title of baron. But by the end of the month he was caught up in the ...”

“... of his working life in England and France. He liked to maintain that his novels were fundamentally French, and that he himself was French in everything but his fondness for ballad-singers and cod with onions. Certainly he was no Englishman, nor likely to become one, despite 14 years spent in the consular service in Bristol ...”