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“... two possible novels, asynchronous with one another and orientated on opposite geographical axes (France-America, England-Australia), but each wholly or partly inspired by the expedition of a French nobleman: in the first case, Tocqueville, in the second, Freycinet. Perhaps it was the French connection that suggested to Carey the idea of folding the novels ...”

“... They had an important common interest in preventing the domination of the Continent by France or Germany. Beyond that, they had distinct spheres of influence where neither was very interested in supporting the other. As a result, their occasional negotiations over forming an alliance were liable to be affected by misunderstandings. They preferred ...”

“... only a moral claim, legitimising inherent, occluded judgments. In ‘The Three Feathers’, one of Peter Redgrove’s variations on the Grimms, written for Radio 4, the eldest brother speaks for the author when he concedes: ‘It looks like shamanism is here to stay.’ Fairy-tales invite latterday shamans with ambitions to spiritual healing, and ...”

“... and to pluck. Consider this delicious morsel of anonymity, ‘On a Lady Sleeping’, plucked 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 ...”

“... rap for the exquisite but evil Margot Beste-Chetwynde, and reflects onthe undeniable cogency of Peter Beste-Chetwynde’s ‘You can’t see Mamma in prison, can you?’ The more Paul considered this, the more he perceived it to be the statement of a natural law. He appreciated the assumption of comprehension with which ...”

“... methodologies to the same gigantic, confusing mass of clues. Recently, though, many historians of France seem to have grown tired of this game. For one thing, a generation of wrangling between partisans of the ‘social interpretation’ of the Revolution (enter the bourgeoisie, stage left) and a hardy band of ‘revisionists’ has left the crime scene more ...”

“... de penser, peut-être de dire tout haut: s’il faut un régime autoritaire pour sauver la France, soit, acceptons-le, tout en le détestant.’ The honesty is characteristic. No less typical, and more central to an understanding of his character, is the fact that he did not commit his thoughts to paper, or transform them into action. Though ...”

“... and the passage to a less strident neo-liberal agenda, under the atonic stewardship of Major. In France, the trend was in the opposite direction. There, the dominance of a market-minded consensus reached its height in the early years of the second Mitterrand presidency. The gains of the arc of opinion represented by François Furet and his friends were there ...”

“... important is going to be left out it turns up: the bourgeois intellectual love-affair with France, the nascent aspirations towards internationalism in art. It is all impressively researched and well if not thrillingly written, though the feeling that here and there it verges on the factitious is never far away. The author’s touch seems most certain ...”

“... on the impact of the outside world on their people rather than the other way round. Even Peter Pulzer’s excellent ‘political history of a minority’ does not quite escape from such introversion. The two Jews whose impact on German politics was the greatest, the founders of the German labour movement, Marx and Lassalle, barely appear (there are ...”

“... and by 1664 his direct ancestor had moved to Riga. The family was typical of the foreign talent Peter the Great employed in his determination to modernise Russian society along West European lines, which produced lawyers, administrators and a number of minor soldiers for the service of Holy Russia. As a result, Barclay was regarded throughout his life as a ...”

“... in the British Year Book of International Law, Vol. 9, 1928, at first appeared winded (Peter Beck, Guardian, 26 July, has since I wrote this revealed that the review was a Foreign Office plant and that ‘C.D.’ was Sir Cecil Hurst, the Foreign Office’s chief legal adviser. Corps Diplomatique?). According to D.C., ‘although the reader may, on ...”

“... paving the road to the March on Rome in 1922 and the fascist seizure of power that followed. In France, the failure of the 1848 Revolution was seen as ushering in the Bonapartist interlude of the Second Empire, which in turn anticipated the future triumph of Gaullism. In other words, focusing on the supposed failures of 1848 also had the consequence of ...”

“... a bargain between the five states which then possessed nuclear weapons – Britain, China, France, the Soviet Union and the United States – and the rest of the world. Countries ratifying the treaty as non-nuclear weapon states agreed not to develop or acquire such weapons. In return, they would be given access to nuclear technologies for energy ...”

“... ate no less than a thousand meals with journalists, mostly at sober, modest places like L’Ecu de France, where it is hard to eat for two (and partake of the standard rieslings) for less than £100. A passage about Eric Varley, the former Labour Secretary of State for Industry, echoes the contrast in his own life between the working-class boy from Hebden ...”