“... how Augustine was reinterpreted in the 16th century, most crucially by Luther, and in 17th-century France by Jansenists, who as hyper-Augustinians believed in a high doctrine of predestination, and were at theological odds with the Jesuit followers of Luis de Molina, for whom God’s transcendence over time was not predestination but foreknowledge of free ...”

“... spilled over naturally into writing it: Garfitt went to informal workshops with John Wain and Peter Levi, heard Ted Hughes read at the Poetry Society. Coghill read his poems, but wasn’t very enthusiastic; Peter Jay took a photo of him in a green silk smoking jacket looking ‘just like Rupert Brooke!’; he talked ...”

“... a misplaced desire to tease. John Wilkes met all these criteria, and was therefore much loved. Peter Thomas has produced the first serious study of Wilkes for some years. This neglect is surprising, in that Wilkes was the quintessential English Radical. With few teeth, a pronounced lisp and one of the most famous squints in history, he leers out of ...”

“... great genius’. Evidence of actual performances also began to increase, particularly in France, where Charles Bordes, basing his edition on Haberl’s and copying his mistakes, published the work in 1893 for the benefit of his choir, the Chanteurs de Saint-Gervais in Paris. Victoria’s use of chant was of special interest to him since he believed ...”

“... and cast-iron fortitude. Nellie Hill walked right out of Spencer, Indiana, went to Paris, France, married Maurice Macmillan, and moved into a fine house in London, England. She not only settled in England but settled for it, thoroughly Anglicising both herself and her ambitions for her new family. But it was still the old formula – rubber and iron ...”

“... about Renaissance representations of Brazil, notably the mock-combat staged for Henri II of France on the occasion of his entry into Rouen in 1550, complete with artificial villages and real Indians. He also has a point to make about Henry IV. The link between Shakespeare and the Brazilians is Mullaney’s notion of the ‘rehearsal of cultures’ as a ...”

“... These had been seized by the Royal Navy, passed on by the British to the de jure King of France, and offered by him to the Queen of England. She followed Banks’s advice that she should not ‘chuse to encumber herself with the stuffed animals’, and passed them on to the British Museum, but kept examples of plants. Other material was destined to ...”

“... appearances. When he accompanied the Prime Minister to inspect the British Expeditionary Force in France shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939, the injunction at this moment of crisis for national survival was that ‘the most suitable clothing will be shooting kit, and, for evening wear, Dinner Jacket.’ On the strength of his commission in the ...”

“... on good clarets and burgundies, not as some regrettable side-effect of the Free Trade treaty with France, but in a roaring populist style which anticipates his emergence as ‘the People’s William’: Now, I make an appeal to the friends of the poor man. There is a time which comes to all of us – the time, I mean, of sickness – when wine becomes a ...”

“... constructions that are popping up in border zones everywhere, especially the Maginot Line in France, ‘the greatest defensive system ever devised’. Donald’s father, Joe, has a subscription to the Illustrated London News – his collection of back issues dating to the 1910s are handsomely bound in red leather volumes – and it has photographs and ...”

“... but close to the shore in Filey Bay.In 1779 the War of Independence was in its fifth year. France, keen to exact revenge on Britain for the Seven Years’ War, had signed a treaty with the Thirteen Colonies, effectively declaring war on its old enemy. Spain, too, declared war on Britain, and hatched a plan with ...”

“... however. In some ways its position in 1989 was closer to that of the colonial powers, Britain and France, in 1956 than to its own position at that time. Just as the colonial powers needed to compensate for defeat in Palestine and Indochina, so by 1989 the US needed a military victory to compensate for its failures in Vietnam and its humiliation in Lebanon and ...”

“... Belgium back to Holland, placed in an internment camp, expelled again back to Belgium, deported to France in 1940, imprisoned in Düsseldorf and hanged on 15 November 1942. While not all the lives Palmier writes about are quite like this, very little space in his enormous compendium is given over to the success stories. Perhaps the luckiest form of desolation ...”

“... write about film first (under the name, Hans Lucas) for the tiny Gazette du Cinéma and then for France’s premier film journal, Cahiers du Cinéma, where his colleagues included Truffaut, Rivette and Rohmer. During this time he travelled to America and Brazil and (like Truffaut) committed a number of petty thefts – from friends, family, employers – and ...”

“... it was recognised that the country could no longer shirk the draconian measures that Germany and France had adopted long before the war began. But the gap between the BEF of 1914 and the conscript army of 1917-18 had been filled by a second force of 2,500,000 volunteers, and it was the fate of this group that gave birth to the ‘lost generation’ myth. The ...”