“... in terms of delusions of grandeur. They were not always wrong. But they rarely commented on the ‘Franco-African state’ (a term coined by the anthropologist Jean-Pierre Dozon), which then existed in all but name as a result of the slow-motion decolonisation orchestrated by Paris and African elites. In France, most people ...”

“... to Paul Preston, however, Brunete was a ‘strategic irrelevance’, and the battle merely gave Franco the opportunity to kill a large number of Republicans using the Messerschmitts he had just acquired. On 18 July a bomb from one of those planes hit the olive grove where Bell’s group was stationed. He had taken cover under a lorry, but was hit by a shell ...”

“... and definition. He is much given to the inclusive ‘like’: ‘writers like Lawrence, Jean Giono, George Eliot, Traven, Tolstoy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and, of course, Sturt’. The ‘of course’ is part of a bullying knowingness that never lets up. If you don’t believe me, turn to page 69, where you will find all the following ...”

“... not to interfere with the Elf networks – and the French left joined ‘the Clan’, as the Franco-Gabonese elite was known. It took another twenty years, and the biggest fraud investigation in Europe since the Second World War, for the scale of Franco-Gabonese corruption to come to light. The investigation did not ...”

“... the West Bank and discouraged from swanning around the Golan Heights with Labor Party dignitaries. Jean-Pierre Filiu, the author of Mitterrand et la Palestine (2005), recalls that in 1980, when Rocard stood as a rival for the PS presidential nomination, the Mitterrand faction began a whispering campaign against him based on his pro-Palestinian position. For ...”

“... structuralism, semiotics and deconstruction. We have had analyses of his work by Charles Mauron, Jean-Pierre Richard, Robert Greer Cohn, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Leo Bersani, Malcolm Bowie and others. It might seem surprising, therefore, not to find a single full-length biography published between Henri Mondor’s 1941 Vie de Mallarmé ...”

“... so did the cult of Napoleon I, only to be revived as a salve to national humiliation after the Franco-Prussian War. The Napoleonic industry in France reached its height between 1885 and 1914 – a period when every European nation was frantically refurbishing old ideologies and inventing new ones. By contrast, post-Gaullist France has carried the torch ...”

“... darkest hours. Yet he was prime minister for just 245 days. George Holoch’s fine translation of Jean Lacouture’s excellent journalistic biography is thus especially welcome. Mendès was born of a family of Portuguese Jews (the original name was Mendo Franca) who fled to France from the tortures of the Inquisition. His father, a travelling salesman and ...”

“... already an American agent, they had to let him go. But the man the BCRA really wanted to get was Franco: plans were laid to destabilise his regime and assassinate him – until the British vetoed the idea. In these early years, the British SIS and the American OSS effectively laid down the parameters within which the French were allowed to operate. Thanks to ...”

“... achieved can be credited to national leaders, namely, Merkel and Hollande. Verhofstadt thinks such Franco-German leadership only reinforces the blindness that Paul-Henri Spaak (another Belgian), one of the founders of European integration, long ago observed. There are only two kinds of state in Europe, Spaak said: small states and small states that have not ...”

“... published by Tom Maschler at Jonathan Cape. Maschler also published Philip Roth. Moore’s wife, Jean, used to joke that Maschler treated Moore like the wife, and Roth like the mistress. Not that those are the only available roles. Flaubert’s first three novels, Madame Bovary, Salammbô and L’Éducation sentimentale, were all published by Michel ...”

“... across Europe. The chapter on Valenciennes is also based on a single author, in this case Jean Froissart. Jane Gilbert provides a brief cultural and political history of the region of Hainaut before commenting on Froissart and his predecessor in the Anglo-Hainaut court, Jean de le Mote. Reims is the next stop: Jane ...”

“... writers were bought any time anyone from the family went to Dublin. My sister became addicted to Jean-Paul Sartre. I remember a book called Words which began ‘I loathe my childhood’; this was an astonishing idea in Enniscorthy at that time. Not long afterwards another sister decided to build a house. There were no architects in Enniscorthy, but lots of ...”

“... to his causes, he was a co-founder of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty).Jean Ross burst into his life soon after his return from Berlin. He had briefly met her there, a frantic performer in the late Weimar scene. Aged only 21, she had left Germany just before Cockburn did and for the same reason; in London she sought him out ...”

“... On​ 21 April 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen became the first leader of a far-right party to reach the run-off of a French presidential election. France was astonished. For two weeks, daily anti-fascist demonstrations took place in cities and the mainstream media called on voters to re-elect the conservative Jacques Chirac ...”