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“... The French, a people normally not plagued by a lack of national pride, revere very few of their past leaders. Consider the following list: Richelieu, Louis XIV, Robespierre, Napoleon, Clemenceau, De Gaulle. Which of them enjoys anything like the adoration from their countrymen that Americans give to the secular canon of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Kennedy? Napoleon himself is today remembered as a vainglorious tyrant who squandered his achievements ...”

“... The Americans have ‘American exceptionalism’. The French have ‘l’exception française’. The Germans have ‘der deutsche Sonderweg’. The English, on the other hand, have no equivalent catchphrase: it seems they take their exceptionality so much for granted that they don’t even bother putting a name to it ...”

“... of his time, Blake was not alone in believing that the last Judgment was nigh, and that the French Revolution was the fulfilment of the prophecy of Revelation. One example is William Sharp, known alike for his skill as an engraver and his extreme credulity. Even Blake was sceptical of his fervent devotion to Richard Brothers, the self-appointed Prince ...”

“... August. By the end of September, 300,000 of them were dead, more than a fifth of the 1.3 million French soldiers who would die during the years 1914-18. By late November, the number of dead, wounded and missing stood at nearly 600,000. The story of what happened next has been told in different ways: in terms of ...”

“... It used to be that historians searched for the causes of the French Revolution in the manner of detectives on the track of a master criminal. Over the years, unfortunately, they dragged such a bewildering variety of suspects into the historical station-house that one would be forgiven for thinking a posse of bumbling Inspector Lestrades had been let loose in the archives ...”

“... conditions), along with 125 million pounds of tobacco and 40 million pounds of tea. But the French state imposed heavy-handed restrictions on the market. Notably, until 1759 it banned imports of cheap, brightly coloured Indian calico cloth so as to protect domestic producers, and granted a monopoly over tobacco sales to the huge, semi-private ‘tax ...”

“... culture, and its distance from our own. On receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the French Army in 1785, the young Napoleon Bonaparte embarked not on the conquest of Europe, but on seven years of mostly undemanding peacetime soldiering, interrupted by long and frequent leaves of absence. Friendless and penurious, he did not devote his ample ...”

“... well worth detours however. First visit, so all is unfamiliar. Much more to see than expected. French Revolution rooms specially impressive. The tricolor that surely inspired Pierre-Jean Jouve’s poem, A une soie: ‘Propice et large soie étalée sans un pli ... Et suave de trois cruautés arrondies.’ – ‘Et le drapeau disait: Liberté ou la ...”

“... trust their officers to carry out orders if they were asked to use firearms against ordinary French citizens. Was France on the verge of another revolution? The gilets jaunes invoked the revolution of 1789 time and again. Protesters wore the red Phrygian cap, sang the Marseillaise and staged mock guillotine executions of Macron. The rumoured hesitation ...”

“... Until then there had been several large volumes on Les Armées Révolutionnaires (written in French), a book of essays (also in French) and a collection of book reviews written anonymously for the TLS. Subsequently, he has become one of the most prolific historians writing in English: 11 books in 14 years, several ...”

“... Foot and Denis Healey will therefore have to fight the next election on a programme closer to the French Communist Party’s than to that of any other important working-class party in the Western world. Labour has been losing support since the early Fifties. The gap between its voters and its activists has been widening since the early Seventies. Between ...”

“... His fame rests on Le Barbier de Séville (1775) and Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), the only French plays which his stage-struck century bequeathed to the international repertoire. But his achievement has been adulterated, for ‘Beaumarchais’ has long been the brand-name of a product variously reprocessed by Mozart, Rossini and the score or so ...”

“... sank without trace. Then, in 1980, 43 school exercise books, laboriously written in self-taught French and studded with Breton words and turns of phrase, were produced miraculously intact by Déguignet’s descendants in response to a newspaper appeal by a local history project. From them, local historians derived a continuous narrative, and the resulting ...”

“... There is a fable about the French past that goes as follows. Sometime in the 17th century, the country’s proud noble caste was humbled and tamed by imperious ministers and kings. Where once it had swayed the destinies of Europe, it was now confined to the gilded cage of the royal court, and the elegant salons of Paris ...”

“... appearance, wiping her hands on her apron, a link of impossibly bright hair slipping free of its French pleat. ‘Got some coffee?’ ‘Coffee? Yeah.’ ‘Got somethin’ to eat?’ You can see the strands of their lives pulling into a knot as soon as they get squiffy and put that slow-slow song with the aching sax on the nickelodeon, while she gives her ...”