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“... Europe. The developing policy of appeasement; the ‘non-intervention’ policy of the British and French governments with respect to the Franco rebellion in Spain; the helpless feeling that the humane liberal traditions in which so many of us had been brought up were dangerously threatened: all of this had us seriously worried. It led many to believe that the ...”

“... election as the Liberal MP for Hackney South, it specialised in a leaden patriotism. The French were ‘the Foul French’; the Labour leader Keir Hardie was ‘Kur’ Hardie; Britain’s wartime opponents were the ‘Germhuns’. On the magazine’s masthead was an image of John Bull in a Union Jack waistcoat and ...”

“... Sophie, it contains the single-word message ‘Well’. He isn’t tempted by the fleshpots of French Africa or Nossi-Bé when the Suvorov drops anchor; rage against futility and injustice is his real passion, and he gets ample chance to indulge it. Politovsky’s personable impersonality is typical of Dunn. In a recent prose piece, ‘A Difficult, Simple ...”

“... had expected. Professor Boime explains the failure of Couture in terms of the psychology of the French nation. His stimulating account is not a standard monograph but an ambitious attempt to link the art of the 19th century to the society that created it. Boime’s belief that painting between David and the Impressionists ...”

“... Byatt (The Virgin in the Garden) found a slightly earlier epicentre in the Coronation year, 1953. David Lodge’s new novel (How far can you go?) charts Catholic perplexity in the face of the permissive Sixties, Humanae Vitae and the abolition of National Service. Julian Barnes’s very much à la mode Metroland is divided into three sections: I Metroland ...”

“... through one-off road races, but unlikely to survive the rigours of a three-week grind through the French countryside. Armstrong’s pre-cancer physique probably had something to do with steroids, and the steroids may or may not have contributed to his getting cancer: we can’t know. In a conversation with his doctors during his cancer treatment that ...”

“... I had to use the OED – you find that the Latinate words are very purposefully derived by way of French: adjoindre is more common in French than its equivalent is in English; and ‘precision’, here, carries a meaning that is slightly less obsolete in French than it is in English, that ...”

“... When David Wilkie’s ‘Village Politicians’ first appeared at the Royal Academy in 1806 it caused a sensation. Less than ten years after the end of the French Revolution, less than ten years before Waterloo, we find a room of common Scots not only arguing the political toss but represented in a style that seeks neither to caricature them nor to elevate them ...”

“... across the world. ‘Real tennis’ (or ‘royal’ or ‘court’ tennis) first emerged in French monasteries in the 13th century. Sports historians believe that the court on which it is played – with long covered galleries on two sides and a ‘tambour’, a low wall which abuts the court on the ‘hazard end’ – mimics the layout of a dining ...”

“... mark. Perhaps the Penguin compilers should also have reached for their Robert and looked up the French verb blairer, as in je ne peux pas le blairer (‘he gives me the creeps’). Those easily offended should on no account read the following quote: This was not a young man making love to a girl. This was the meeting of twin souls. The light covering of ...”

“... any party, including the Labour Party of Tony Blair and the Conservative Party of Blair’s heir, David Cameron. Glasman has no fundamental problem with Cameron’s notion of the Big Society, which he takes very seriously. He absolutely is not one of those who think it’s just a fluffy cover story for an ideological programme of radical Tory cuts (which is ...”

“... A quiet English sort of Fascism?’ ‘Abs’lument pas!’ I snapped (quoting from a favourite French film), ‘Abs’lument pas!’ – with a confidence I could not muster today. Then, a contemporary at a college reunion (a conservative chap, working for the Ministry of Defence) said to me sweetly: ‘I think you’re a Fascist.’ I billed: ‘Oh, you ...”

“... the Tatars as a fifth column, and repression often followed. In the Crimean War, as Ottoman, French and British troops invaded, tens of thousands were killed in battle or through disease, horrors vividly described in Tolstoy’s Sebastopol Sketches. Tatar leaders were quick to plead allegiance to Russia: ‘We Muslims, from young to old, must be ...”

“... formation as an Ausstellungsmacher, and it is no more than touched on by the Canadian art critic David Balzer in his breezy book about ‘how curating took over the art world – and everything else’. But both do point out how far we have come from the original avatars of the term (whose root is cura or ‘care’): the curatores, the civil servants who ...”

“... influence on the generations that followed. Following Osborne’s death in 1994, however, David Hare, among others, leaped to the playwright’s defence, in his memorial eulogy and a longer lecture first delivered in 2002 and repeated on the stage of the Royal Court on the 50th anniversary of Look Back in Anger’s opening. Now John Heilpern has taken ...”