“... POWs, helped the men find seats and stow their luggage before waving them off.Two months earlier, Pierre Laval, head of the Vichy government, had announced the creation of the relève, or ‘relief’, a scheme that would enable thousands of French prisoners to return home. But their repatriation had strings attached. Under this exchange programme, three ...”

“... of states to secure the peaceful unity of the continent, as proposed by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre in France. The first became canonical in the diplomatic chancelleries of the time. The second inspired philosophers like Rousseau and Kant, in whose writings the term ‘perpetual peace’, hitherto indicating only the non-repetition of a particular ...”

“... of his novels and the self-destructive tendencies of his life. The dean of Gissing studies, Pierre Coustillas, has for decades provided Gissing materials and support to other scholars, but Delany is the first in more than 25 years to produce a full-scale biography, and the first to engage in an all-out struggle to come to terms with Gissing the ...”

“... I tell John Bird the story of Dudley Moore and me seeing Stravinsky and his wife Vera in the Hotel Pierre in New York in 1963, saying how the name Vera has always seemed to me to humanise Stravinsky. ‘Not so much as Stockhausen,’ says John. ‘His wife’s name was Doris.’ 15 October. Across the river to rehearsal, the crucial scene between Auden and ...”

“... income or – especially – location). Tastes correlate with all those other variables – as Pierre Bourdieu never tired of showing – but their correlation is less than perfect: otherwise critics could never convince us of anything we don’t already believe. Social networks can be one more means of convincing. They are thus part of the larger story of ...”

“... outfit in collaboration with Poitras, Jeremy Scahill and others and funded by the eBay cofounder Pierre Omidyar. (By the time this piece goes to press, the first issue of First Look Media’s first online magazine will be out: it will be something to behold.) One characteristic of targeted incendiary devices, though, is that they don’t have to be very ...”

“... both Jacques Chaban-Delmas and his successor Alain Juppé became prime minister. Likewise, Pierre Mauroy from Lille. Raymond Barre, prime minister under Giscard, subsequently became mayor of Lyon. So too today, the prime minister under Hollande is Jean-Marc Ayrault, the long-time mayor of Nantes (and head of the Socialist delegation in the National ...”

“... marginal areas to which they have been pushed by more powerful societies. The anthropologist Pierre Clastres argued that the Yanomamo and Siriono, two of Diamond’s prime examples, were originally sedentary cultivators who turned to foraging in order to escape the forced labour and disease associated with Spanish settlements. Like almost all the groups ...”

“... often – behind the lines, as victors avenged themselves on helpless civilians. Victor Serge and Pierre Herbart evoke devious communist manoeuvres to destroy ideological opponents in the middle of a desperate war of survival. And Jordi Soler, born a quarter-century after the Civil War ended, writes about the camp at Argelès-sur-Mer, part of France’s foul ...”

“... was it, in 1805, aged 22, to fall in love with and seek to seduce the wife of his older cousin, Pierre Daru, who had enabled him to become part of Napoleon’s administration? But this wild daring did not mean Beyle was never fearful. He was afraid of boredom, of being alone, of being trapped, of not having the price of an opera ticket or a pair of yellow ...”

“... Hugo’s strategy for publishing Les Misérables; this involved dumping his regular publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, insisting on an enormous 300,000 francs for an eight-year licence (around £3 million today, Bellos calculates), then orchestrating a huge book launch with more or less simultaneous publication in various countries, an equally huge publicity ...”

“... Egyptians might think otherwise. The director of the Antiquities Service – still a Frenchman, Pierre Lacau – considered the tomb of such significance that, under the terms of the excavation permit, the finds should stay in Egypt, though the final decision took several years (contra Wilkinson). In 1930, the Egyptian government paid Carnarvon’s widow ...”

“... was much civic advancement for Jews, in administration, politics and the military. The historian Pierre Birnbaum has calculated that there were 25 Jewish generals, 34 Jewish judges and 42 Jewish prefects in the period to 1945. De Waal quotes Philo of Alexandria to the effect that Jews considered their ‘real fatherland’ to be the country they ...”

“... would suggest. One story begins with an ending (‘On the last day of their love, Clara and Pierre Glendinning went for a walk in the countryside’) and one ends with a beginning (‘I think I will be born anew in my mother’s house’). Another is composed entirely of questions, arranged in stanzas and apparently directed at someone who has gone away ...”

“... to Sartre. They give a detailed and cheerful account of her seduction of Sartre’s pupil, Pierre Bost. Repeated almost verbatim as the romance of Françoise and Gerbert in her first novel L’Invitée (She came to stay), the story clearly demonstrates the autobiographical sources of her early fiction. What has scandalised the French are the ...”