“... republicanism’s loss of innocence in the face of the Terror. With the collapse of hopes in the French republic, English liberals like Browning and Clough – one might add Landor, who deserved inclusion here – looked increasingly to the Italian cause. One of Paulin’s main aims is ‘to redeem Clough from the neglect which his work has suffered’, and ...”

“... From the outset, ambiguity enfolds The Plum in the Golden Vase, David Tod Roy’s translation of the first volume of the monumental 16th-century Chinese novel Chin P’ing Mei. The title, as he explains in his Introduction, is a ‘multiple pun’ composed of one ideogram each from the names of the three principal female protagonists ...”

“... noble nature was intentional. ‘Staffage’ is the word for human and animal extras, I find, and David Teniers the Younger, whose work Turner admired, is offered as the source of their plain looks. Whatever his narrative intention, foreground accents – not just people, but boats, buoys, goats, ducks – are important parts of the visual machinery. They ...”

“... in the Lebanon, there are few more practical ultra-modern weapons available on earth. Our French friends at the Elysée can wring their hands and protest their loyalty to Britain. But just as the technicians of Aerospatiale-Dassault, when publicly prevented at Orly Airport from going themselves to Argentina, simply got on the telephone from Bourges to ...”

“... Jean​ Jaurès was a deserving child of the French republican meritocracy. An outstanding pupil from the town of Castres, near Toulouse, he came top in the entrance exam for the École Normale Supérieure, where he specialised in philosophy. In 1885, at the age of 25, he was elected as a Republican deputy for his home town ...”

“... the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly (which was later to serve as one of London’s first cinemas). Other French paintings, including a version of David’s Coronation of Napoleon, with its dazzling profusion of documentary details, were shown separately in London in the same period. By the mid-century touring exhibitions were ...”

“... he might be tempted to make such a barely thinkable journey, it was now. He was 31, famous for the David and the Pietà, but his dealings with the pope were deadlocked. If Europe’s ultimate patron was being difficult, perhaps a more obliging one could be found elsewhere. In his author’s note, Enard cannily stops short of asserting the factuality of the ...”

“... romantic, reactionary, revolutionary, mystic, miser and indefatigable philanderer: without him French literature, French politics of the 19th century are unimaginable. The scope of his ambition, the range of his genius, the vastness of his output, the extent of his appetite, the audacity of his opportunism and the ...”

“... an internal stairway and tiptoed down to the courtyard, where a carriage was waiting for him. The French ambassador to the Holy See, the duc d’Harcourt, remained alone in the chamber for 45 minutes, speaking in a loud voice so that no one would suspect that the pope had left the building. At the church of SS Marcellin and Peter, the pope’s coach was met ...”

“... David Wilkie, 20 years old, a sober, modest son of the manse, came to London from Edinburgh in 1805. He brought with him a couple of pictures, a sound training and great diligence. In 1806 he exhibited The Village Politicians at the Academy to great acclaim. Scotland had produced a Dutch talent – a Teniers or an Ostade ...”

“... de Meun, on discovering the letters they had exchanged in religious life, translated them into French and popularised their story in his Roman de la Rose. One of his characters praises Heloise as peerless among women, but uses their tale all the same to warn men against marriage. A gothic legend recounts that when Heloise was buried beside Abelard, already ...”

“... and Peace still hovers over them. Western accounts are more sober, and tend to see things from the French point of view, thanks to the massive amount of available French documentation. They emphasise Napoleon’s mistakes, the effects of winter and the travails of the French soldiers in ...”

“... law generally prevails over democratic discontent in spite of adverse electoral consequences. David Cameron must have looked on in envy: he’d tried to talk tough on immigration without any authority to reduce Britain’s openness to southern Europeans. Merkel meanwhile profited from continuing to talk up German openness while having ensured that Germany ...”

“... to Sabine Rewald, by two sepia drawings of his studio windows with the River Elbe beyond by Caspar David Friedrich. The drawings are exact in their rendering of casements, panes and the gradation of light on bare walls, and careful in their delineation of the distant riverbank. The frugal medium and the impersonal quality of the draughtsmanship give you the ...”

“... after the Second World War.’ She gives much of the credit for this shift in taste to Elizabeth David, who in the 1950s preached that the fruits of the earth were more than mere adjuncts to flesh. Now the high price of meat is doing Mrs David’s work for her. The campaign has been waged mostly by women, over the dead ...”