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“... minister granted her dual nationality on the grounds of her ‘evident cultural links’ with France, and in 1980 she became the first woman member of the Academy. In that same year, Les Yeux Ouverts: Entretiens avec Matthieu Galey was published in Paris. Galey, a French journalist, had been to interview her on Mount Desert Island. The title of the book ...”

“... with the arrival at Alexandria of the French fleet and 36,000 troops under Napoleon’s command. France wanted a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean to stem the flow of India’s riches to Britain. It was a military expedition with cultural ambitions. Napoleon let no one forget that he was following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. A Commission on ...”

“... feminine nom de plume to avoid military censorship, and that he lives ‘in exile’ in southern France. The impression given is that Khadra is a dissident, rather than a staunch defender of the Algerian army, an institution that bears considerable responsibility for the country’s descent into war. Khadra is a talented writer, but he isn’t a ...”

“... boy with no parents who took every chance he was offered (along with quite a few he wasn’t) and rose to become a celebrated performing rider in the bullrings of Spain. He kept a journal assiduously as he went, and wrote up his Memoirs in four volumes with hand-drawn illustrations, tables of contents and footnote glosses for those without his linguistic ...”

“... personal. The 18th century’s claim to have been a high summer of letter-writing in England and France is based on a series of linked factors: a tipping point in literacy levels, dramatic commercial expansion, which demanded the movement of people across nations and colonies, and the sophistication of the postal services organised by two highly bureaucratic ...”

“... Revolution’. In April, the House of Commons responded by voting for war with France. Initially, that war, which would continue intermittently for much of the next century, was fought in Ireland. The campaigns of 1689-91 bequeathed to modern Ireland many of its most important lieux de mémoire: Limerick, Londonderry, the Boyne and ...”

“... could give them a clear advantage in the big races, including the three-week-long Tour de France, the sport’s premier event. How large an advantage is open to dispute: one study puts the increase in ‘peak power output’ for recreational cyclists taking EPO at 12-15 per cent, which translates into an 80 per cent increase in endurance (time riding ...”

“... example, familiar to readers of this paper, of Hilda Murrell. In 1984, Miss Murrell, a 72-year-old rose specialist who lived in Shrewsbury, was taken out of her house in her own car, driven to a field outside the town and systematically, apparently ritualistically, stabbed. She was left unconscious in the field, where she died of exposure. The Shrewsbury ...”

“... by Peter Davidson from BL MS Add. 25,707: Calmely as the mornings soft teares shedd Upon some rose or Violet bedd May your slumbers fall upon you All your thoughts sit easy on you Gently rocking heart and eyes With their tuneful Lullabyes There are no firm divisions between objects here, or between objects and non-objects. Tears fall, slumbers ...”

“... of contemporary Spain. She is 37. What’s striking is her witheredness, her brittle grasp of the rose in her hand – a symbol of subservience to her Spanish consort. This is Bloody Mary drained of life, as in Victorian photographs where the subject seems to regard you from beyond the grave. ‘Queen Henrietta Maria’ (1636) by ­Anthony van Dyck When ...”

“... mirror up to them, in the tawdry and convoluted intrigues of The Jew of Malta, performed at the Rose Theatre in February 1592, a few weeks after his deportation from Flushing. So we have these two spies or projectors, these two Richards or Dicks, and their apparent recollections of Marlowe’s blasphemies. They closely corroborate one another on the ...”

“... July and stayed for the next two years, first in Ireland and then in Wiltshire, before crossing to France on D-Day. He was part of what Wendy Webster terms ‘the great proposition’, a phrase taken from the opening scenes of The True Glory, an Anglo-American war documentary produced in 1945. ‘Funny thing,’ an American voice pronounces. ‘On the way over ...”

“... Napoleon’s Code as ephemeral as his victories. It endures as the core of civil law not only in France but in its former European possessions, and their former possessions too, encompassing ex-French Africa, all of Latin America and the Philippines by way of Spain, and Indonesia by way of the Netherlands, as well as Quebec and Louisiana. Even that list ...”

“... anatomy of the brain?’ ‘Not very much.’ ‘Yes, it would take a very long time.’ Aristide rose and walked over to his desk, and picked up a plastic, grapefruit-size model of the brain – one of the few things on it. Then he sat down again across from me and pulled the model apart to show me the corpus callosum, which, he said, processes everything ...”

“... as badly as he thinks. According to the OECD we remain relatively tolerant of minorities (behind France but ahead of Germany), despite the hard turn against immigration; we may be sexist – according to the UN rapporteur on violence against women – but we’re not homophobic; and we’re no longer at the bottom of Unicef’s child well-being league table ...”