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“... Citizens, you are dissolved.’ With those words General Joachim Murat dispersed the Council of Five Hundred in November 1799 and ended France’s first experiment with parliamentary democracy. The scene was the culmination of the 18 Brumaire coup, which enabled Napoleon Bonaparte to seize power. A British cartoon mocked ‘the Corsican crocodile dissolving the council of frogs’, but in France the coup’s success was mostly greeted with relief ...”

“... the pains of childbirth as a ‘short-lived’ inconvenience and ridicules a myriad of what we would today describe as sexist clichés, including the notion that being more often on top during the sexual act ‘may have determined pre-eminence on the side of men’ (she nonetheless defends that ‘lovely position’ on the grounds that it was ‘more ...”

“... British ambassador in Paris, couldn’t conceal his enthusiasm: ‘The greatest Revolution that we know anything of has been effected with, comparatively speaking – if the magnitude of the event is considered – the loss of very few lives. From this moment we may consider France as a free country.’ By the end of the ...”

“... Certainly he fell, received a visit from the dead monk and recovered, but as Elizabeth King and David Todd detail, the supposed origin of the machine is supported more by circumstantial evidence than positive proof; it’s an ‘elegant hypothesis’, the authors conclude. More interesting than the clockwork Diego’s uncertain provenance, however, is ...”

“... said the entangled Antony – This, her response to the gift of a painted jug from Mabel Loomis Todd, Austin’s mistress, and later the unchosen posthumous first of her editors, is plain only about its deliberate obscurity. It is the equivalent of shutting a door in its reader’s face. As Richard Sewall, her biographer, noted, ‘She enjoyed ...”

“... Nobody​ has a good word to say about Mabel Loomis Todd. When she’s remembered at all, it’s as a homewrecker: the vamp who seduced Emily Dickinson’s brother, Austin, 27 years her senior, and destroyed his marriage to Susan Gilbert, Emily’s closest confidante. Like any good seductress, Todd was an opportunist ...”

“... Their argument has been that in order to analyse the identity of women as it is constructed now, we need to know how it has been constructed in the past. In literary terms, at least, this has sometimes been seen as a misplaced ambition – at best unsophisticated, at worst a collusion with the powers of oppression. Knowledge of the past was indicted as no ...”

“... lies rather in his sly portrayal of the squad’s commanding officer as Napoleon. As the historian David Todd has argued, this foreign policy disaster exposed the hollowness of the emperor’s promises to promote the trade and influence of France throughout the world. After Napoleon’s overthrow in 1870 and death in exile at Chislehurst in Kent, the fate ...”

“... as ‘Mr Blake the engraver’ carried with it an unmistakable air of condescension. On the whole, we have tended to ignore Blake’s activity as a commercial engraver, even though he made some thousand copy plates in his long career: alternatively, we have relegated it to a necessary condition of life which enabled him to ...”

“... site of the archive. The complex nature of this archive was well captured in 1945 by Millicent Todd Bingham in her introduction to Bolts of Melody, a selection of more than six hundred poems culled from the vast trove of papers then in her possession. The papers were given to Bingham’s mother, Mabel Loomis Todd, by ...”

“... simply illustrative, and more or less equal numbers of fashion shots and celebrity portraits (do we really need Boris Johnson?). But the catalogue, the real star of the show, gives a thorough account of the magazine’s history. Condé Nast, who had bought the US version in 1909, wasn’t taking any risks by launching a British edition: American Vogue was ...”

“... Stephen Sondheim is America’s master of musical theatre, as long as we are prepared for the work to be brilliant but not relaxed. His is a voice of solitude struggling to believe in company, and that of a lifelong game-player, so be careful about taking this book at face value as an autobiography, or as giving the whole story ...”

“... husband, a Republican senator) and her book reads like an extended feature for Vanity Fair. We learn that Bob Dylan adored her in Raintree County and that David Lynch kissed her after the 1987 Oscars (she was a fan of Blue Velvet) and that she resented Andy Warhol for making millions by turning her face into a silk ...”

“... are depicted in a montage sequence almost entirely devoid of human figures. Only once do we glimpse four civilians fleeing from a flooded factory. (There is, of course, some cosmeticisation of history involved here: according to Paul Brickhill, whose book The Dam Busters was a major source for the film, the raid caused the deaths of 1294 people by ...”

“... revealing contradiction in the way bearness has been marketed in Western consumer cultures. Bears, we have been led to believe, are super-cuddly – right up until the moment when they rip your throat out.For most people, the cuddles came first, in the guise of a four-legged comfort blanket with button eyes, satellite-dish ears and a blob of black velvet for a ...”