“... is not the French, but the Haitian, in which enslaved people not only freed themselves but forced France to abolish slavery everywhere in its empire (until Napoleon brutally reimposed it in 1802).As the French Revolution’s lustre has faded, the task of explaining why it occurred has come to seem less urgent. A few decades ago, fierce battles raged between ...”

“... comfortable and dull Provençal city (which remained a Papal enclave until its annexation by France during the Revolution). A confirmed bachelor, he kept regular hours, eschewed games and exercise, and read virtually no contemporary literature. Brockliss calls Calvet a ‘prig’, an ‘intellectual and moral snob’ and a ‘social climber’. At first ...”

“... was the reverse of the unmilitary monarch of popular legend, who was keen to promote peace with France. Instead, between 1382 and 1386, he pursued with ‘uncompromising vigour’ plans for expeditions to the Continent during which he might win his manhood. In 1385, thwarted by poverty and circumstance, he instead led an army to Scotland, ‘an important ...”

“... exhibited such phases. Here the width of Professor Charlton’s canvas proves its worth. France, he finds, lagged well behind England in the preliminary phase of awakening to natural scenery. The English were alive to pastoral attractions as early as the 1720s and markedly so by the 1740s, but it was not till the 1760s that the French showed a ...”

“... of the governing assumptions about intellectuals, but it doesn’t square with the facts. France may be a special case, especially France between the 1930s and the 1950s, but the British situation should be regarded as ‘one distinctive variant of a larger international pattern’. Germany, Russia, Italy and the ...”

“... France, it has often been said, is a democracy with the manners of an absolute monarchy. Think of the ceremonial splendour with which French presidents surround themselves, the haughty, distant style they tend to adopt, or the way relationships within their entourages tend to mimic, with delicious self-consciousness, patterns of favouritism and intrigue developed long ago at the court of Versailles ...”

“... preached a Jewish return to Zion. Chapter 1, ‘Could It Be Now?’, begins with the appearance of David the Reubenite in Venice some time around Hanukkah in 1523. Calling himself ‘son of Solomon and brother to King Joseph’, ruler of the lost tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh that dwelt in the far east of myth, beyond the Sambatyon (‘a river so Jewish ...”

“... those words General Joachim Murat dispersed the Council of Five Hundred in November 1799 and ended France’s first experiment with parliamentary democracy. The scene was the culmination of the 18 Brumaire coup, which enabled Napoleon Bonaparte to seize power. A British cartoon mocked ‘the Corsican crocodile dissolving the council of frogs’, but in ...”

“... Empire, which Russia was used to bullying, was being bullied more effectively by Britain and France. In response to the invasion, Sultan Abdulmejid I declared war on Russia, and Britain and France sent ships to the Bosphorus to protect him against attack. On 30 November 1853, Russian missiles destroyed the Ottoman navy ...”

“... The NPT held that the countries which already had nuclear weapons – the US, USSR, China, France and Britain – could keep them: they were the ‘nuclear club’ and no one else could join. In return they would supply peaceful atomic technology (as they were already doing under the Atoms for Peace programme), and would themselves move towards ...”

“... programme of the exhibition included a range of sports that were popular in late 19th-century France: motor races and ballooning, fishing and pigeon racing, as well as mass displays featuring thousands of gymnasts and archers, golf and polo parties, school sports, events for women and children, and – least Olympic of all – professionals competing in ...”

“... studies of the 19th-century duel: Robert Nye’s Masculinity and Male Codes of Honour in Modern France nicely complements Ute Frevert’s Ehrenmänner (‘Men of Honour’) of 1991, a book that is close in subject-matter – although not in interpretation – to the one reviewed here. The duel derived from the French medieval cult of chivalry, with its ...”

“... weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’ – that was Marx’s famous comment on France in 1848. When Nietzsche elaborated on the same idea in one of his ‘untimely meditations’, he had Germany in mind, the Prussia-writ-large created under the auspices of Bismarck. We have become familiar with the idea that the dead weight of Prussian ...”

“... climate and its hunting – the fashionable area around Pau was known as ‘the Leicestershire of France’. He spoke French before he learnt English and retained several Gallic traits, including an extremely rapid manner of speaking. He was also educated privately and so, unlike the great majority of officers, escaped the conditioning of the public ...”

“... appear amenable to massive concentrations of firepower, regardless of the long-term consequences. (France, which is a hybrid model under its presidential system, is also moving this way.) Unencumbered executive leaders worry about being lumbered with the blame for any failures of national security, because their autonomy leaves them exposed to carrying the ...”