“... and egalitarian refusal to be impressed. But since our only national cult is the Royal Family, James Agate’s less flattering verdict may also be more appropriate: ‘The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.’ Other nations’ great men, however, are a different matter. Perhaps because Napoleon was born on one ...”

“... earlier in the year and decided on a honeymoon in Europe. In Catalonia, a matter of weeks after Franco’s military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic, they settled happily into a political climate of intrigue and rivalry among the variegated species of anti-Fascists who failed, in the end, to hold the pass: bourgeois democrats and left ...”

“... and appreciate. But this isn’t a painting. It’s a photograph taken in 1870, a document of the Franco-Prussian War. Look again and you notice that the bridge itself is missing, destroyed by the conquering Prussian army; its suspension cables dangle in the air. The men who might have made this picture had different priorities. Earlier in the ...”

“... himself a castle. In 1937 he was sent to Spain to lead a detachment of Blackshirts in support of Franco, and brought a private harem with him. In 1938 a member of this harem, Yvette Blank, bore him a daughter. Yvette was Jewish, but even at this dangerously late date (and even as he was using antisemitic tactics against Lilliana in court) he became, for a ...”

“... War’, and deftly avoids the words ‘Hitler’, ‘Vichy’, ‘Nazi’, ‘Falangist’ and ‘Franco’. Given this embarrassment the loan is a remarkable achievement. Although an important aim of the exhibition was to explore the influence of the Spanish Old Masters – and their successor Goya – on modern French painting, we quickly realise that ...”

“... or less in at the birth of the game. Mary, Queen of Scots was said to be as keen on it as her son, James, who played at Blackheath when he came south to inherit the crown. Private clubs remained sticky about women becoming members, but might permit them to play inconspicuously at off-peak hours. At Muirfield, the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers allowed ...”

“... which stands out most in the memory of his fellow feasters: a lunch, in a private room at the Due Franco restaurant in Islington, the highlight of which was the entry of a nervous, near-naked strip-o-gram lady who sat on Neil’s knee and slowly removed his shirt and vest. While everyone else hovered on the edge of death by embarrassment, Neil, according to ...”

“... Revolution. In Locke’s stead, Pocock drew attention to the less celebrated achievement of James Harrington (1611-77) and to his use of a classical idiom of republican citizenship. Classical republicanism turned out to be a vital hidden ingredient in the history of English political thought, which assumptions about the importance of a Lockean language ...”

“... the house were surplus railway sleepers: this would date the construction to around 1902, when the Franco-Ethiopian railway first reached Dire Dawa, by which time Rimbaud would have been dead for 11 years. This has not deterred tourguides and sightseers, for whom a palpably existent house is more important than a precise location. (The writer John Ryle reports ...”

“... on literary ‘trial’ in the short-lived (but charmingly titled) magazine Wimbledon in 1990, Franco Fortini – whom Calvino once called his ‘implacable antithetical interlocutor’ – derided the later work as ‘deadly, destructive’, the encounter with Oulipo as a ‘poisoning’ and Six Memos as an exercise in banality contrived for idiot ...”

“... its origins in the 1680s, in the response to the invigorated absolutism of Louis XIV in France and James II in England. The French Protestants who fled persecution, and Locke, who hid in the Dutch republic from agents sent by James II to capture him, were credited with formulating new ideas about religious ...”

“... and equal inclusion within imperial frameworks before rejecting them altogether. The Jamaican James Williams, a former slave, used imperial justice against the repressive ‘apprentice’ system that persisted after the abolition of slavery; the Indian liberal Dadabhai Naoroji criticised ‘un-British rule’ in the hope of realising the economic ...”

“... name, his role in the army initially had little to do with actual fighting. When the signing of a Franco-American alliance in 1778 brought thousands of French soldiers and sailors to the United States, he established himself as an intermediary. Americans – especially New Englanders – were intensely suspicious of the French, while the French officers ...”

“... Balzac, then I am inclined to think that Salman Rushdie may very well turn out to be the Muslim James Joyce. It seems to me that the same cultural forces, historical processes and social oppositions that made the emergence of an Arab Balzac probable have also made the emergence of a Muslim Joyce possible.’Some of the arising comparisons are relatively ...”

“... she found the time and place to do so – like Emily Dickinson in collaboration with Henry James.    Fingerbone was never an impressive town. It was chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere ...   Sylvie did tell me once that Lucille ...”