“... the sense that the observable differences between the social structures of 18th and 19th-century France would have occurred anyway. Here we have one of the most systematic analysts of social change arguing that the event often said to be definitive of the modern world was largely a random occurrence and one without significant consequences for social ...”

“... a single uniform phenomenon that grew up overnight. The versions which have evolved in Germany, France, Sweden or Canada are rooted in the conventions of those societies and respond to local expectations. They have been in place for at least one, in some cases two generations and they are not free from tensions and conflicts. Those who have grown up under ...”

“... in the conservatory are juxtaposed with broken glass and torn fabric. Asya’s first exile is to France; she finds she is pregnant and bears Sergei’s child. She is loved by a poet and a doctor, both Russian, both involved with émigré plots and factions. Then Sergei turns up on her doorstep – mysterious, and alarmingly marked by the experience of ...”

“... the Thirties he painted less and spent more time looking for the right subject. Living as a Jew in France during the Occupation, and threatened with discovery, he was forced to move from place to place. The stomach ulcer he suffered from got worse. In August 1943 he had a severe rupture and died during an operation which had been delayed by the difficulty of ...”

“... government, in the Musée de l’Art Décoratif in Paris. Two: the proprietor of L’Hôtel de France tells me that in order to enter my room I must insert the key upside down and turn it counter-clockwise.If you can appreciate the unintentional joke, then you are on the side of ‘artificial detachment and aesthetic distance’, and so ‘better fitted to ...”

“... saw no point in defeating Germany only to restore the power of Britain’s traditional rivals – France, and, especially Russia, who might, victorious in Europe, turn her attention back to India and the East. Britain should therefore raise the largest possible army but take her time about doing so. Then, in about the third year of the war, when all the ...”

“... exile. But the most noted instance of the prophet rejecting his own country is the director Peter Brook who, having forged a glittering career in the British theatre, from a consummate King Lear to a definitive Midsummer Night’s Dream, decided to up sticks and set up an international company of actors abroad. ...”

“... in an English translation in 1986) and is almost entirely confined to the history of odours in France. He makes no reference to the pioneering work on early modern smells by Mark Jenner, a British historian at the University of York. But Muchembled’s guiding assumption, that human reactions to smells are not innate, but are shaped by experience, is as ...”

“... of French painting as he found it. He was born in 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in north-eastern France. His father ran a successful hardware and seed merchant’s business; his mother, who came from a family of furriers, tanners and glove-makers, had once worked in a hat-shop. Spurling describes very well the hardworking northern culture in which Henri grew ...”

“... One of Siegfried Sassoon’s brothers was killed in action there, but Sassoon himself went to France. Sir Compton Mackenzie’s Gallipoli Memories (1929) hardly ranks alongside Goodbye to all that. By default, the rare representations of the campaign in popular culture are elevated into distorting prominence, and it is almost certain, as a result, that ...”

“... War of 1904-5, Sukhomlinov had steadily built up Russia’s military strength and called on France to match his exertions. In July 1914 he assured Nicholas II that the army was ready to fight. ‘Never before had Russia been as well prepared for war as it was in 1914,’ he would write in his memoirs. Within a year, initial Russian successes had turned ...”

“... proclaimed its ambition to play a leading role in the field of economic and social history in France. Bloch and Febvre advocated a broadening of the historian’s vision to encompass not only standard topics of economic history such as trade and currency, agrarian society, transport and technology, but also values, sensibilities and feelings. Their aim ...”

“... question of a possible future French attack on Germany. In the event of a war between Germany and France, Wilhelm explained, he would expect the Belgians to side with Germany. So long as they agreed, he would see to it personally that Belgium was rewarded after the conclusion of hostilities with territories annexed from northern ...”

“... genius of its makers. And so, up to a point, it proves. This is more a ‘literary history of France’ than a ‘history of French literature’, to steal a distinction drawn in a strategically reflexive chapter here on Gustave Lanson (a chapter very well done, by Antoine Compagnon), whose Histoire de la Littérature Française, first published in ...”

“... us. I suspect that, among the stories that Kafka or his Dog had in mind, were those of Johann Peter Hebel (1760-1826). At all events, Kafka called Hebel’s ‘Unexpected Reunion’ the ‘most wonderful story in the world’, and the judgment does not strike one as absurd. Hebel’s stories, or parables, first appeared in the Lutheran almanac for the ...”