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“... or the Manchester Guardian said. But what Orwell wrote was inspiring. In Barcelona, the day before he joined the militia, he saw an Italian standing in front of the officers’ table. ‘Something in his face deeply moved me. It was the face of a man who would commit murder and throw away his life for a friend – the kind of face you would expect ...”

“... up from history for a commission he received from the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in 1983, Douglas Dunn has made him the narrator of his book-length poem The Donkey’s Ears. It’s been a long journey for Politovsky this time round as well: after leaving the poem for many years Dunn picked it up again in 1997, about the time he found himself with lots ...”

“... with a piece of oil paper, and then with a piece of blue paper’) for ten hours a day, six shillings a week, while his father was in the Marshalsea. It wasn’t the childhood he wanted, so he hadn’t spoken about it. For Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, in his clever new study, the mass of biographies can make ...”

“... that Simone de Beauvoir played. Raymond Aron has already said that his relations changed from the day that Sartre met her. Until then Sartre liked to have him as his companion, someone with whom he could talk: once Simone de Beauvoir had taken on this role, he was no longer interested in Aron. As the latter put it, ‘Sartre est l’homme d’un interlocuteur ...”

“... Rousseau and Madame d’Houdetot could not meet, they wrote letters, sometimes as many as six a day, and of such an intimate nature that they were desperately secret. We are well into the epistolatory novel that is Julie. As Cranston points out, one of the very rare occasions when Rousseau uses the word ‘romantic’, so frequently associated with him, is ...”

“... to ensure a ‘functioning statute book’ – to make sure there’s legal continuity after exit day. There are historical precedents. For example, Article 73 of the Irish Free State Constitution Act of 1922 stated that the laws in force in Ireland when the union with Great Britain was dissolved were to ‘continue to be of full force and effect until the ...”

“... suffer. In French the word for ‘victim’ is always feminine. These legal scandals happen every day. Everyone will recognise the predicaments and tribulations of the protagonists. Martine Cloetta’s case is one for Esther Rantzen rather than for Emile Zola. There is also another side to the case as presented by Graham Greene. If Martine abandoned the ...”

“... way of showing that Paris was functioning normally. Cardinal Baudrillart even attended one on the day the Germans entered the city: he was the only Academician who did. In common with the great majority of French people, writers wanted to return to the normal and familiar. Some had good reason to do so. Henri Membré, for example, is quoted by Sapiro as ...”

“... card index which occasionally included physical mementos. There were records for Lord Alfred Douglas, Steward’s lips landing ‘where Oscar’s had been’; for Thornton Wilder, who lasted ‘ninety seconds and a dozen strokes’; and the 18-year-old companion of the ageing André Gide, offered up in a bedroom lit only by a ‘frilly little pink tulip ...”

“... British high commissioner who advised in 1960 that since a black government must come to power one day, Britain must ‘keep faith’ with the black majority, while at the same time not antagonising the National Party government to no good purpose: we must, he said, walk a tightrope through civil war, revolution and any other form of mayhem, and be waiting at ...”

“... added that a very similar drink system or traditional dopstelsel exists in South Africa to this day. Farmers in the western Cape often pay part of their workers’ wages in cheap wine purchased in bulk, and some of the older and more dependent labourers say they would not want it any other way. In black Africa and white Africa beer is used to buy submission ...”

“... Marie-Laure was a neighbour and – er – friend of John Richardson when he lived with Douglas Cooper in Provence. Uzès was merely a neighbouring town. But it prompts, as from a garrulous taxi-driver, a rapid stream of lurid facts. The Duchesse Anne d’Uzès squandered millions on studs and hounds and her lover General Boulanger and his attempted ...”

“... Douglas Coupland’s new book is both more than a novel and less. There is a JPod website where you can see the six main characters represented as Lego figurines, hear some of their favourite songs, and join in ‘pod pastimes’ – not much at present beyond selling yourself on eBay, but more is said to be ‘coming soon ...”

“... to discuss the funeral arrangements. The President announced that he could not go to Colombey that day. It would have to be the following day, or the day after that. Then he changed his mind and said he would go that afternoon, But Madame de Gaulle refused to see him. There were two ...”

“... the famous would drop in rather than with the famous themselves. Perhaps a historian will some day work out when exactly the noise of the traffic made conversation impossible in the cafés. Not long after the Liberation, the historian Pierre Renouvin, when he received at his home in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, used to say that neither he nor his wife were ...”