“... are clearly guiding the policy of that former French prisoner-of-war and thrice escapee President François Mitterrand. German reunification has galvanised all of France’s diplomatic efforts behind closer economic and political union with Germany within the Community. By sharing sovereignty, France aims to ensure that it cannot be used again by a ...”

“... the wage inflation that had been struggling to keep up. Mrs Thatcher’s lesson was learned by François Mitterrand, among other politicians, and Western European electorates have since then been tolerating high unemployment for longer than would previously have been thought possible. If the only benefits of inflation came from systematic deception of ...”

“... Western head of state in recent memory (British monarchs included) has had a more regal touch than François Mitterrand, alleged socialist. Nothing is more alien to mainstream French democracy than the American-style ‘populism’ practised by politicians from Andrew Jackson to George W. Bush. The word populiste is a deadly insult, most recently deployed ...”

“... of Paris throughout his time as French Prime Minister and resigned the post only when he replaced François Mitterrand as President. The lid is now coming off a series of financial scandals which took place during his time as Mayor, but his achievements should nevertheless be noted by London’s first boss. The winner on 4 May will have no power to ...”

“... Before he ran for the Socialist Party nomination in 2011 François Hollande was an identikit politician: son of a left-wing Catholic mother and avidly right-wing father, degree from Sciences-Po, brilliant énarque, father of four (with Ségolène Royal), bon viveur and party machine man, tracing a line from Mitterrand through Jacques Delors to Lionel Jospin ...”

“... this case, freedom, nation, republic etc). Plenty of De Gaulle’s opponents, including Sartre and François Mitterrand, did not see it that way; for them, ‘myth’ in this context would imply ‘lie’, which is not what Hazareesingh intends. He is profoundly concerned with the registers of collective memory – monuments, rituals, symbols, street ...”

“... the revival of the Socialists as the largest party of the Left and the fact that the Socialist Mitterrand had so narrowly failed to beat Giscard d’Estaing that he could fairly claim to stand for one hall of the French population. But Johnson fails to see that the Communists were not simply faced with the problem of an accommodation between those who were ...”

“... time enough for us to draw up an end-of-year or new year balance of their achievement. President Mitterrand, like Mendès-France, was long a staunch opponent of the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, but, despite this, he has had no trouble in adapting to the institutions bequeathed to him by de Gaulle. In terms of ceremonial, he has abolished some ...”

“... as president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he was also an adviser to François Mitterrand in the 1980s. Two of his previous books have also been unusual in aims and arguments: Bruits (2001), on the nature of music, and L’Homme nomade (2003), a study of displacement as the foundation of culture. From the 15th until the 19th ...”

“... from the mainland to stare at his prison and then at his tomb. French presidents from de Gaulle to François Mitterrand manoeuvred deviously to appease right-wingers with wreath-laying and half-promises while honouring the Resistance tradition by holding to the trial’s verdict. In 1973 the dead Pétain was kidnapped. The plot was thought up by the ...”

“... of elsewhere. Seventy titles just on the electoral campaign of spring 2002. Two hundred books on Mitterrand. Three thousand on De Gaulle. Such numbers, of course, include a huge amount of dross. But they are not mere logomachy. High standards of statistical rigour, analytic intelligence, literary elegance continue to distinguish the best of French writing ...”

“... us from the air. We bomb you here, on earth. We don’t need planes. That’s it. Your president, François Hollande, thank him.Bourbotte describes finding bits of bodies all over the concert hall: some victims had been picked off, others were mutilated by machine-gun fire. The injuries were so severe that some police officers thought the victims had been ...”

“... nationalism in former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda, the Spanish Basque country and elsewhere. When François Mitterrand died, Derrida recalled his efforts to secure votes for foreigners in municipal elections; later, he wondered whether the cloning of Dolly the sheep was going to alter conceptions of ethnic purity, whether mobile phones would transform ...”

“... the dominance of a market-minded consensus reached its height in the early years of the second Mitterrand presidency. The gains of the arc of opinion represented by François Furet and his friends were there for all to see. France was finally delivered of its totalitarian temptations. The shades of the Revolution had ...”

“... and 17th-century olive-wood panelling? Who else was an object of some interest to Mick Jagger, François Mitterrand and Greta Garbo, to Gorbachev, Judy Garland – ‘Rudi’, ‘Judy’, ‘Rudi’, ‘Judy’ – and François Truffaut? And, among those who were, who was also arrested on suspicion of drug ...”