David A. Bell

The story of the ‘pig of Falaise,’ formally tried and executed in the late 14th century for the supposed murder of a child, recounted by Michael Grayshott, is an excellent one. Alas, like so many good historical stories, it is also largely and perhaps entirely fictional, as the historian Paul Friedland recently demonstrated in Seeing Justice Done: The Age of Spectacular Capital Punishment in France....

Much as I admire David Bromwich, I find his unremittingly acerbic, ungenerous treatment of Barack Obama depressing and misguided (LRB, 5 July). Obama has been far from an unqualified success, but in the face of a depressed economy and a mean-spirited, fanatical opposition, he has achieved far more than Bromwich gives him credit for. He staved off total economic catastrophe, largely disengaged the United...

Benedetta Craveri says that I accuse her of an ignorance of basic social history, and that I failed to read her footnotes (Letters, 6 July). In fact, in my review I paid tribute to her ‘serious research’. What I claimed, and stand by, is that her book ends up resembling traditional fables about the French nobility despite this research. I did not, as she seems to think, argue that her book adheres...

Perry Anderson’s two-part article on France is a virtuoso performance: a marvellously well-informed, dyspeptic and entertaining survey of recent French history (LRB, 2 September) and (LRB, 23 September). Still, it’s hard not to wonder if France has really seen quite so complete a triumph of liberal capitalism as Anderson implies. He writes with eloquence and bite about the continuing monopoly...

Perry Anderson’s two-part article on France is a virtuoso performance: a marvellously well-informed, dyspeptic and entertaining survey of recent French history (LRB, 2 September) and (LRB, 23 September). Still, it’s hard not to wonder if France has really seen quite so complete a triumph of liberal capitalism as Anderson implies. He writes with eloquence and bite about the continuing monopoly...