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“... There is a general impression, both inside the country and abroad, that France is floundering in the face of its many political, social and economic problems – which is why winning the World Cup was held to be so important. Jonathan Fenby’s fine book, On the Brink: The Trouble with France, explores the multi-faceted nature of this crisis, from the decline of the baguette to widespread political corruption ...”

“... Life expectancy for women in the UK is now lower than in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Men do little better. In almost every other affluent country, apart from the US, people live longer than in the ...”

“... the coastal battery offering protection to the mouth of the Tyne during the wars against France and Germany. The guns were decommissioned in 1956. The North Light gone in a smoke of sea-spray, its stone still riding in and out of sight; the frayed pennons and bannerets of the tide-crests all that is visible now, in the haar-light and the shoaling ...”

“... In July 1785, Thomas Jefferson, then American Ambassador to France, paid a visit to the dungeon of the Château de Vincennes. Its three-metre-thick walls had previously imprisoned Diderot and the Marquis de Sade. Now, however, it housed the workshop of a gunsmith, Honoré Blanc, and a dozen assistants. As Jefferson watched, Blanc sorted into bins the pieces of 50 musket flintlocks: ‘tumblers, lock plates, frizzens, pans, cocks, sears, bridals, screws and springs ...”

“... into northern England. The young Henry VIII had embarked on a military expedition in northern France, and Scotland responded to French calls for aid by invading England. James IV’s army was equipped with an impressive number of modern cannon cast in bronze and was accompanied by Continental experts in the latest techniques in warfare. The army and its ...”

“... cities. Hasty polls announced that 70 or 80 per cent of the population, including many in France’s largest conurbations, supported this massive show of impatience. Yet the gilets jaunes first came together beyond the margins of the major cities, in rural areas and small towns with rundown services, low-wage economies and dwindling commerce. They ...”

“... representations of human life’. During his exile the king had seen women on the stage in France, and he missed them. There was no outcry. And if at first the women weren’t very good (Pepys says they didn’t learn their lines), their appeal was all too obvious. When the first professional English actress (no one knows her name) stepped out as ...”

“... went a little further, but Johnson resisted calls for a stronger response. Case numbers rose sharply, hospital admissions and deaths rose less dramatically. The system was never overwhelmed and many will feel Johnson made the right call.But to judge how well Johnson and his government have done overall, we need to ...”

“... had been willing to admit as much. In 2019 he authorised a commission to report on the role of France in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, and on a trip to Kigali in 2021 acknowledged its ‘damning responsibility’, though his commission was careful to say that France was not ‘complicit’. In 2020 he ordered ...”

“... Why do people take the ferry to France to buy cheap drink? Obviously, it’s to save money – though not even the Yuletide change that the day-trippers trousered the day I accompanied them explained the glow in their cheeks, or the roistering of our homeward journey across the English main. Less obviously, but only just, the booze-cruises are also about over-indulgence, greed, and in some cases outright criminality ...”

“... was the prototype: blonde, blue-eyed, with porcelain skin. Until Marie-Antoinette, the queens of France had been of interest only as breeders. With her appetite for dresses, jewels, parties and public entertainments, she was more like a favourite than a queen: more like Du Barry, Louis XV’s mistress, the frequent target of lampoonists. She imposed her ...”

“... reporting back to a Jim Crow country that had prohibited the black American soldiers who fought in France from marching (along with their white American and black French and British counterparts) in the 1919 Bastille Day victory parade. Many returning black veterans were targets of the 1919 race riots in Chicago, Tulsa and other cities, but those who stayed in ...”

“... its world-historical debut in August 1791 when ten thousand slaves in the north of Saint-Domingue rose up and laid waste to sugar plantations. Within three months, the numbers involved in the insurrection had grown eightfold. Sugar production almost ceased. Fortunes burned. Planters fled, and some were killed. By 1794, the rebels had compelled ...”

“... prestige of the Spanish monarchy declined (despite his efforts, or even because of them), while France rose. The ‘planet king’, Philip IV, was eclipsed by the sun of Louis XIV. History, or the historian at any rate, has little patience with failure. The second reason for the neglect of Olivares is the loss of most of his papers, those notorious ...”

“... was greatly outnumbered (as it was to be for centuries) by some of its neighbours: in the case of France by around four times, in the case of Germany by nearly as much. But population size did not necessarily correlate with political and economic power. Germany and Italy were weakened by their political fragmentation, ...”