“... is not Nato’s enemy, but Nato’s alibi; if Russia had not existed, then Britain and France would have had to invent it as an excuse for their cowardice and indecision.’ But Tory diplomacy on Bosnia had precedents: Hurd and Rifkind seem to have imagined themselves as realpolitiker descendants of the consummate Disraeli faced by a posse of minor ...”

“... from rice and 281 calories from sugar and other sweeteners. In some countries, such as Turkey and France, per capita wheat consumption is a great deal higher and in others, such as Cameroon (where maize is the staple food) or the Philippines (rice), much lower. But it’s striking that wheat consumption has been increasing fast since the 1960s, even in ...”

“... Borderers’ and also in the Prelude and Excursion. The crisis is associated less with ‘France’ than with ‘false philosophy’ in its bearing upon both public life and personal relations. One is tempted to speculate whether – just as the matter of Annette Vallon was covered up for a hundred years – there might not also be some political ...”

“... see more hideous old men; but what contributed more than aught else to give to the spectre that rose before us the aspect of an artificial creation was the red and white paint with which he glistened.’ The man also wore a light wig, ‘with innumerable curls which indicated extraordinary pretensions to elegance’. He wore gold earrings and ‘a ...”

“... Committee started providing estimates of war-related deaths since the conflict began in 1998: they rose from 1.7 million in 2001 to 5.4 million in January 2008. If correct, these figures account for about 8 per cent of the current population of the country. They were called into question in 2008, however, when two Belgian demographers concluded that the excess ...”

“... The Jeddah had for some days been taking in water. Now it sprang a heavy leak. The water rose rapidly. The captain and the European officers abandoned the settling and heavily listing ship, taking Seyyid Omar with them, and were picked up by another vessel and taken to Aden, where they told a story of violent passengers and a foundering ship. The ...”

“... a letter Proust wrote in 1903, at the height of an anti-clerical wave which was sweeping through France: I can tell you that at Illiers, the small community where two days ago my father presided at the awarding of the school prizes, the curé is no longer invited to the distribution of the prizes … The pupils are trained to consider the people who ...”

“... the greatest resistance has been displayed’. By that point it was already clear that it was in France, the country of Mesmer, Bernheim, Charcot, Bergson and Janet, France with its long literary tradition of exquisite sensitivity to the psychological, that resistance to psychoanalysis was greatest. ‘In Paris ...”

“... events to be understood? Jean-Pierre Filiu, who teaches at Sciences Po in Paris after a career in France’s diplomatic corps which included tours of duty in Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, argues in his new book, From Deep State to Islamic State, that the Arab revolutions (as he calls them) have been foiled – Tunisia apart – by successful counter-revolutions ...”

“... he holds a small scroll (a love poem?) while the other, resting between his thighs, toys with a rose. This is a Shakespeare fit to have his poems set as lieder. He is also celebrated as a central figure in German Kunst on the proscenium arch of the Latvian national opera house in Riga, once the city’s German-speaking theatre, where four portrait profiles ...”

“... theatrical relic. The last thing we all saw her in was L’Aiglon, in which with great dignity she rose on one remaining limb from her chair and, holding herself firm with one hand, swung her arm into the theatrical air to salute France as Rostand’s young leader who never led or ruled. She always had a bleating ...”

“... of Governor-General Francis Harrison (1913-21), the proportion of Filipino officials rose from 50 to 90 per cent, and the total number of all officials from roughly five and a half to 14 thousand. The oligarchy inherited no solid bureaucratic traditions from the Spanish period, had no interest in this civil service except as a source of ...”

“... those days. Rich families vied for the papacy; loyalties inclined to this or that superpower, to France or to Spain; momentarily, the people of Naples rose against Spain and were suppressed; every two or three decades, a plague would descend. The economy was an ox-cart stuck on a muddy road, with most cities’ populations ...”

“... the Sunni majority. Four years after Syria gained independence, Hafez joined the air force and rose quickly up the ranks. After the Ba’athist military coup of 1963 he became increasingly powerful, as head of the air force and then minister of defence. In 1970, he staged a bloodless coup from within the ruling military committee, which he called the ...”

“... This is a situation without parallel in any other European state. In different ways, unions in France, Germany and Italy carry a good deal more clout than they do in the UK – even though in France, for example, a much smaller percentage of workers belong to them. Yet the way people work is changing more radically than ...”