“... worse outcomes than other places. Mixed-payment, less centralised systems do better (Australia, France). We should probably do more of what they do. There’s the what. But how? Is it a question of electing politicians who say they’ll fix it? That seems unlikely: it hasn’t worked so far, and it’s hard for politicians to get elected while challenging ...”

“... finance were inextricably linked. But as a result of the spiralling costs of the wars against France, and because of Parliament’s desire to keep a tight grip on the Army, the control of military finance was taken over by the House of Commons, and from 1697, the new king, William III, was paid an annual sum by Parliament, to cover his own royal ...”

“... as I write, talk of a second wave has receded. The first wave is enough to be getting on with. France, a centre-right government which once tried to pass for a centre-left one, tried to hold the line for longer than its equivalents in Italy or Spain. But once the line could no longer be held, it moved to an all-out war footing. For now the war is all there ...”

“... in the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau. He turned 15 a few days after the Revolutionists in France renounced all seigneurial privileges; he would remain all his life the sort of springtime radical who does not let you forget the coincidence. That bliss was meant for him; he took its betrayal personally. A natural pedant with an acquired aptitude for ...”

“... rescued her from the unwelcome attentions of a soi-disant army captain, and eloped with her to France. On their return, Sheridan fought two duels on Eliza’s account; once married, the couple relied on Sheridan’s income as a theatre manager (he bought a controlling interest in the Drury Lane Theatre at the age of 25), and his earnings from the three ...”

“... An interesting section is devoted to the mass of anti-aristocratic pornography which appeared in France in the years preceding the Revolution. ‘If the philosophes had an influence on the events that brought about the revolution, so had the writers of bawdy and obscene chroniques scandaleuses,’ Wagner asserts. Certainly a work like Bordel national sous ...”

“... thought at one point it was near Pakistan. It’s actually kind of in the middle of Europe between France and Germany and somewhere else. OK, I’m still not 100 per cent sure. I went by plane for Christ’s sake’) but taught him a lot about how to fill dead airtime; then local commercial radio, before he made it to Capital Radio and the big time. Even at ...”

“... of Days (1914). On the outbreak of war he managed to get himself attached to the staff of Sir David Henderson, then commanding the Royal Flying Corps, and after some difficulty in donning his uniform (‘Six people endeavoured to put on my puttees; none of them were entirely successful, except finally in the evening. Sir ...”

“... The sculptor​ David Nash has lived and worked in Snowdonia for half a century, and the exhibition of his work currently on view at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff (until 1 September) is a tribute to his time in the region. Born in Surrey in 1945, he moved to the once flourishing slate-mining town of Blaenau Ffestiniog in 1967, the year he left Kingston School of Art ...”

“... at once. Perhaps it’s just the best we can do. Perhaps we should have stuck to philosophy.Caspar David Friedrich is a possible exception. Born in 1774 in Greifswald on the Baltic coast, he studied painting in Copenhagen and in 1798 moved to Dresden, the so-called or self-styled ‘Florence on the Elbe’, where he died in 1840. A major retrospective of his ...”

“... the abominable to the merely unsavoury.In the case of Holocaust denial – the crime for which David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison and banned from returning to Austria – the fear of contagion in some countries is based on rational horror instructed by recent experience. That is the argument for making an exception to the belief that the ...”

“... to sentimentalise the Entente Cordiale were a flop. In the Second World War the collapse of France in June 1940 was greeted with sighs of relief. Almost at a stroke, British hopes of salvation were transferred from the unreliable French to the mighty United States. At this point in his life Churchill was, more than ever before, Jennie Jerome’s ...”

“... and its impact on Europe, largely, though not entirely, through the work of archaeologists. David Wilson, Director of the British Museum, is among the most distinguished of these, and the exhibition which he and his pupils have mounted there (until 20 July) quite properly commemorates their achievement and that of their Scandinavian colleagues. This, in ...”

“... can be tolerated, and might even be enjoyed, as piano-players in the funhouse of letters. Early in David Plante’s diaries, we find him tinkling away, dropping names in basso profundo, as if knowing people and knowing what they do in private can be the thing that makes one special. He is 28 years old when he comes to London from the US (a little younger than ...”

“... thing with which E.T. is remotely comparable is a sea-potato, or salp (commonly known in Southern France as a bijou). But even sea-potatoes do not have large, brown, glossy eyes and an intelligence extending over several million years. If Emma Tennant’s novel exists in a somewhat uneasy relationship to the analytic and theoretical texts which she ...”