“... which they draw their hopes and fears is a one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old treatise written by a French aristocrat of 30 who had spent barely nine months in the country. But though Democracy in America has been appropriated by America it was not really written for Americans. Its immediate target was de Tocqueville’s countrymen, who seemed to have a talent ...”

“... to France as part of Syria under the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement. François Georges-Picot, the French delegate at the secret negotiations that divided the Ottoman Empire into British, French and Russian satrapies, laid out France’s dubious claim to Mosul and the area around it. Foreign Office notes of secret ...”

“... the stages of nature as they have changed through the successive periods of British prehistory. David Stoddart’s conclave of geographers engage in a philosophical exploration of geography itself. It is always a pleasure to find a tribute to the schoolroom. Richard Muir was fortunate to have an inspiring teacher who contrived to overcome ‘the tedious O ...”

“... C.R.W. Nevinson, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer. Together they are the subject of David Boyd Haycock’s compelling group biography, A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (2009), and now also of an exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery (until 22 September). Gertler became obsessed with Carrington. Nash was in ...”

“... resistance to Germany in two world wars, Joan of Arc and General de Gaulle are central to the French national self-image and F.D. Roosevelt is central to the story of America’s interwar economic recovery, and Nelson Mandela is central to South Africa’s new-found racial harmony. Exalted company for our two great heroes – but surely justified? Not ...”

“... Economic Sentiments (2001), showed that political economy emerged in the decades before the French Revolution as an anti-establishment ideology of liberation from the Ancien Régime. More particularly, she demonstrated that Smith’s very occasional use of the phrase ‘invisible hand’ – the now well-worn metaphor for the self-regulating capacity of ...”

“... boxes for two years. Muir says that Champcommunal occupied a senior role at Maison Worth, the French fashion house opened by an Englishman, Charles Frederick Worth (a Galliano avant la lettre), though that wasn’t until after her time at Vogue. Worth plays an important part in the Vogue story, though, and in the story of fashion altogether. Le Grand ...”

“... 1779 the British merchant ship Westmorland, en route from Livorno to England, was captured by two French warships off the Spanish coast. France having joined the War of Independence on the side of the Americans, the Westmorland’s captain, Willis Machell, was prepared for trouble. He had a crew of sixty and 22 cannons, but was outgunned. The ship was towed ...”

“... In 1942, Roosevelt was anxious to get his troops into action somewhere. Where else but in French North Africa? Afterwards, the logic of the situation was to exploit this victory, even if the victory was more delayed than had been hoped. Was it not necessary to draw German forces into Italy, thereby weakening their position in France and thus preparing ...”

“... of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, which was four years old at the time. In collaboration with French archaeologists, the new department found a city of the fourth and third millennia bce with walls almost eight metres thick and buildings standing almost two metres high. At the same time, it was conducting other excavations in and around Gaza City. These ...”

“... One evening in December 1975 David Plante called on his friend, the novelist Jean Rhys, who was staying in a hotel in South Kensington: ‘a big dreary hotel’, she said, ‘filled with old people whom they won’t allow to drink sweet vermouth’. She was sitting in what the receptionist called ‘the pink lounge’, wearing a pink hat ...”

“... got properly started before it begins to show signs of not going on for ever. So when I read in David Plante’s Difficult Women (1979) that Sonia Orwell in her final years complained to him, ‘I’ve fucked up my life. I’m angry because I’ve fucked up my life,’ it doesn’t seem to me necessarily to imply a particularly tragic or wasted life. At ...”

“... million to HTB through the Sequoia Trust, a charity he runs with his wife, Sabina de Balkany, a French-Hungarian antiques dealer, and his son, Winston. Marshall has also provided funding for St Mellitus College, an offshoot of HTB, which now trains nearly a quarter of Anglican ordinands. The first principal of St Mellitus, Graham Tomlin, met Marshall at ...”

“... than the desire to explore the situations and character dispositions that make laughter happen. French and Saunders, whose range, from shared flat to Hollywood burlesque, owes much to Eric and Ernie, are to some extent an exception. Others, like Reeves and Mortimer, who are the inheritors of the spirit, if not the style, of Morecambe and Wise carry the ...”

“... to the original 13 colonies. The Revolutionary War, followed by the upheavals attendant on the French Revolution, largely suppressed European immigration for a generation or more, and the United States Congress prohibited the further importation of African slaves after 1808. Then following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, European migrants once again lifted ...”