“... his own nose and fond of the woman could have handled it, I suggest, by wearing plasticine under a French letter.’ The remarks about Swinburne date from 1931. Empson displayed bufferish tendencies at the very beginning of his career, although he didn’t elaborate them into a strategy until his return to England in 1951. Bufferdom was not some kind of ...”

“... Jasmin Delouche, goes birdnesting at the age of 20.) This school, set in its reassuringly familiar French village – the blacksmith’s, the washhouse, the smell of the boys crowding round the stove – is the only place of security in the book. Any venture into the world means loss: Meaulnes can’t find his way back to the Domain, Frantz loses his ...”

“... his wife in August 1793: ‘I hardly think this war can last, for what are we at war about?’ The French had executed Louis XVI in January, which might have given Nelson a hint. Further clues to the significance of this particular war could be found at the Battle of the Nile five years later, when British ships with names derived from classical antiquity ...”

“... of confidence as they stretch for snazzy English renditions of Simenon’s enigmatically blunt French. Pietr-le-Letton from 1931 was first translated in 1933 – note that English publishers were onto Maigret pretty quickly – as Suite at the Majestic. That same translation became The Strange Case of Peter the Lett, then The Case of Peter the Lett. In ...”

“... surprise, and the first surprise of this book is the title itself. The common assumption that the French Post-Structuralists abandoned the interest of their phenomenological predecessors in consciousness, subjectivity and the entire philosophical vocabulary including words like ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ is challenged by the titles of the two recent books by ...”

“... up a decent appearance and looking after their guns. Both grandfathers spoke unusually good French (among other languages) as a result of their unconventional upbringings. Bertie was the son of divorced parents; Tap was (less unusual at the time) an illegitimate child – and he fathered some more illegitimate children after the death of his ...”

“... member, I have now read, in addition to the biography, the full-length critical studies by David Mikics and James Naremore, watched Jan Harlan’s excellent documentary, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, and explored every entry in The Stanley Kubrick Archives edited by Alison Castle: a 13-pound art-historical tome containing solid articles on every ...”

“... to English and the other seems vaguely native? Etymology doesn’t help us much here. Ennui is French but it is related to annoy, and spree may come from Old Norse, or it may actually be French, an elision of esprit. The OED merely murmurs about the word’s ‘obscure origin’. Still, whatever their derivation, the ...”

“... Barnett mounts a vituperative attack on the CBCs, unearthing a priceless memo from David Cameron written in response to accusations that he lacked the common touch: ‘Please, operational grid, give me the right language.’ And he gives an acute analysis of the postwar transition from ‘the government of a whole society by a ...”

“... as Bishop Alonso de Cartagena reiterated; and their leaders were reputedly of the stock of King David. To understand the fate of Jews and Muslims after 1250, in a period when virtually all of Spain except Granada was in Christian hands, it is essential to realise that there were two intellectual traditions at work, one home – grown, which tolerated the ...”

“... reasoning in the end ‘mechanical and unsatisfactory’. In this story the central event is the French Revolution, one of many reasons why its bicentenary next year deserves to be taken due note of. Directly or indirectly it gave rise to immense dislocations and upheaval in the Americas. Before 1789 the biggest change came with the stormy birth of the ...”

“... its political innocence in our times. Stroumsa acknowledges the objections of those, like the French historian of medieval philosophy Rémi Brague, who deny the unifying cultural power of the medieval Mediterranean. But she clearly doesn’t agree: ‘Maimonides is a Mediterranean thinker in the sense that he is more than a Jewish thinker, or more than an ...”

“... in the August attack, but the figure is unexplained and at variance with first-hand reports: French intelligence estimated 281 deaths and Médecins Sans Frontières 355. The Kerry document was effectively discredited in less than a week, but only below the radar of the mainstream press and policy establishment. On the basis of a tissue of far-fetched ...”

“... only strengthened the cult of Marat. In his funeral procession, hastily arranged by Jacques-Louis David, Marat’s bathtub was carried through Paris by members of the Society of Revolutionary Women, and his corpse (bathed in aromatics to disguise the stench) was shouldered by a dozen men. Weeks later his heart was placed in an urn looted from the Tuileries ...”

“... court of Lorraine, at Lunéville. She was fat, looking in her portrait by Tocqué a little like David Hume (her friends called her ‘La Grosse’); also hopelessly disorganised, full of neurasthenic aches and pains, and a great groaner and complainer – but this last somehow in a companionable fashion, showing she was as interested in ...”