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“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... such as Norman Stone, Hew Strachan, Annette Becker and Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau. With Cataclysm, David Stevenson draws on much recent work to provide a comprehensive account of the war, with a welcome interest both in the non-European theatres and in the home fronts. His book is also part of a more general attempt to rethink the meaning of the Great War and ...”

“... Belushi, and, it should be added, few have been so telling or so readable as Indecent Exposure, David McClintick’s relentlessly documented account of the scandalous behaviour of the unsinkable executive David Begelman. Film and television documentarists have also been vigorously elbowing their way forward. A team from ...”

“... should flock to Britain to see at first hand what they had for so long been reading about. The French made a nuisance of themselves by following Walter Scott in the street, demanding to be allowed to draw him. But they were disappointed by British art, and of the modern buildings Defauconpret could only mutter: ‘des briques, des briques et toujours des ...”

“... worth fifty million pounds.’ This is Kenwright’s mother. Ferguson can’t quite believe it: David Moyes was giving me the eyes. For a minute I thought it was a get-up, a performance. Bill’s background was in theatre, after all. It occurred to me while all this was going on that I ought to check Wayne’s medical records. Was there something physically ...”

“... Le Lionnais, for his part, also had first-hand experience with tyranny: he’d been active in the French Resistance and survived the prison camp at Dora. Far from being a strident break with the past, Oulipian practice is preoccupied with tradition. What they call ‘anticipatory plagiarism’ can be found in everything from Lasus of Hermione, the ...”

“... proceeded, to the amazement of staff and inmates alike, to tuck into hunks of cheese, French bread, cold chicken and a bottle of wine. With obvious pride Johnston observes: ‘it was typical of mum and dad to think they could guzzle their picnic and wash it down with Sancerre in full view of the prison staff and inmates.’ No wonder her dorm mate ...”