“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... 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 ...”

“... and so on. There is the notable case of jejune, now, because of a fancied association with French jeune, thought to mean something like ‘puerile’; Amis has found it written in italic to show that it is a French loan-word, and even, with bitter triumph, spelt jéjeune. And it is hard not to wince at one’s daily ...”

“... it was very dirty – was done by them. They unleashed volleys of arrows, slaughtered hundreds of French men-at-arms, and finished off both prisoners and the wounded who lay helpless. The legend of Agincourt has become so popular – in Britain at least – partly because it teaches that the common man can change the course of history. As W.B. Bartlett puts ...”

“... At the Paris Salon​ of 1822, the young French artist Adrienne-Marie-Louise Grandpierre-Deverzy exhibited The Studio of Abel de Pujol, a painting of her teacher’s workshop. More than a dozen female trainees are shown going about their business. A little group looks over de Pujol’s shoulder as he critiques a sketch; others make copies from paintings selected for their improving moral content; in the background, two women are sketching from a ringleted, clothed female model, concentrating on getting the folds of the drapery right ...”

“... was also described as a ‘free-born black’ from Martinique, an island on the other side of the French colonial empire. More immediately, he had come from Paris, where he had been put in the Châtelet prison and then, to his outrage, exiled to Ile de France by order of the Naval Minister. What he was supposed to have done to warrant this treatment is far ...”

“... with their ever expanding lists of secondary contributions as well as primary sources in Latin, French, Middle English, Dutch, Catalan and Portuguese. And all this done in Sumption’s spare time from his work as a barrister and then a justice of the UK Supreme Court. But what is the result? Was the Hundred Years War special in anything except its ...”

“... her in-laws, and they had excluded her from the inheritance. She wrote a book on the history of French hairstyles and a guide on how to live frugally, recommending stews over roasts at dinner parties, for instance, since your guests will mop up the sauce with bread and be satisfied with a smaller quantity of meat. She prospered. Fending off the advances of ...”

“... a heap of other bodies down the monumental staircase of the Grand Circle’). He reads Russian, French, German, English, American, Spanish and Japanese books – fiction, philosophy, politics, poetry, history, anthropology ... He sketches his uncle, the writer General Butovsky, in a pair of spliced punchlines. In daily life, he was extraordinarily ...”

“... Last July David Cameron announced a judicial inquiry into Britain’s alleged participation in acts of torture and rendition in the years since 9/11, though he also said that it wouldn’t begin until the current round of civil lawsuits had been resolved. The emphasis, he implied, would be on Britain’s role in condoning or assisting foreign agencies rather than on our own independent behaviour ...”

“... in New York in 1915. His father, Bennett Siegelstein, who had grown up (alongside Eddie Cantor and David Sarnoff) on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, was a prominent lawyer, as well as the founder and former chairman of the Menorah Home and Hospital for the Aged in Brooklyn. He had championed Romanian Jews, held seders, and sent the poor Jewish children of the ...”

“... on Arshi Pipa’s 1987 translation. Kadare dropped a few passages and added some new ones in a French edition of 1997, however, and David Bellos has changed the English text accordingly, as well as making ‘stylistic amendments here and there where they seemed called for’. (Bellos’s judgment in matters of style is ...”