“... and sexual excess, as Richard Cobden put it – the Arabs were often admired for manly simplicity. David Urquhart, secretary at the embassy in Constantinople, wrote that Islam was not a false religion to be ridiculed: it taught no new dogmas, propounded no fanciful revelation and imposed no new priesthood; on the contrary, he argued in The Spirit of the East ...”

“... place in which British readers took a thoughtful or sentimental interest – rather like France in the days when reputable British papers carried a ‘Letter from Paris’. The author had gone to Israel soon after the embarrassment of Anthony Eden’s ‘police action’ at Suez: she taught at the Hebrew University, wrote film scripts for the Jewish ...”

“... in October 1956. It was initiated not by the Arabs but by Israel, in collusion with Britain and France, against Egypt, now the standard bearer of radical Arab nationalism. The period 1949-56 may be seen simply as an interval between the first and second rounds. But it was a critical phase in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, a period of increasing ...”

“... expense of the Left.The last four of these points are the most relevant to the British case. In France, where the socialist tradition is predominantly Marxist, the revisionist thrust has gone to the very heart of the Marxist historicist credo, and has also, quite unlike what has been happening here, taken a sharp anti-Soviet and pro-American ...”

“... vanity and waste, a provocative topic in the year following the execution of the King and Queen of France. ‘Knight was never generous in his polemics,’ says Penny, in the introductory Brief Life which is invariably too brief on such matters, ‘and this, combined with his apparent admiration for disordered nature, led some to react politically.’ Readers ...”

“... international legitimacy and a potentially invaluable ally against England’s traditional enemy, France. For the 16-year-old Catherine, by contrast, marriage to the Prince of Wales in November 1501 must have seemed like a parachute descent to an alien and unappealing planet. She spoke not a word of English, and both she and her entourage found English ...”

“... for its being a guide for stewards and landowners. (You don’t need a spatula to enjoy Elizabeth David.) There was an ash tree outside our house in Kentish Town: I know because I had to ask the council to lop away some of the upper growth as it came closer to the bedroom window. (The ancient tree in James’s story is uncomfortably close to the window of the ...”

“... on a life lived first in Napoleonic – Champollion was born in 1790 – and then Restoration France; who see a need to locate the Louvre every time it is mentioned; and who sink to a new low in asinine anglicisation by turning the Ecole Normale into the Normal School. The book’s one real fault, however, is strategic: inflexibly chronological as it ...”

“... covers the years from 1907 to 1920 or 1921, had been taken down from dictation by the novelist David Plante and was still substantially unrevised. A third section consists of fragments from a diary of the 1940s. The second part is dull by comparison with the first, though the events are interesting enough: a brief period at the Perse School in ...”

“... it was recognised that the country could no longer shirk the draconian measures that Germany and France had adopted long before the war began. But the gap between the BEF of 1914 and the conscript army of 1917-18 had been filled by a second force of 2,500,000 volunteers, and it was the fate of this group that gave birth to the ‘lost generation’ myth. The ...”

“... ceremonial bantering of heralds than fighting à l’outrance. Riots in 18th-century England and France also acquired conventional forms, a language of gestures and moves known to the adversaries, and a set of constraining regulations. Social historians have referred to them as ‘collective bargaining by riot’. Conflict in civil society has almost never ...”

“... the difference betwixt a free and an arbitrary country, – between the despotism of the King of France and the despotism of the Parliament of England? It is a solecism in politics, and an absurdity in terms, to say that in a limited Government there can be unlimited Power.’ In the 1770s these had little chance of being anything but minority views. For ...”

“... something that resulted from it. In this Scarisbrick follows contemporary Catholic opinion, and David Starkey has adopted a similar position. Either way, the couple were in for a very long engagement, something almost unknown in the 16th century. It was not until November 1532 that their relationship was consummated, the delays dictated by a most ...”

“... It was ‘odd’, he said, to deny that Islam was the central element of the various struggles. David Cameron has moved in the same direction. The day after the 7/7 attacks, when he was shadow education secretary, he said that ‘the Muslim community in this country doesn’t support what is happening.’ Earlier this year he modified that remark, arguing ...”

“... not enough to confirm the greatness of greatness; we want to know our business with the dead. David Marr unfolds it, steadily, over seven hundred pages. The first vindication of his huge and wonderful book is that it offers ways into all of White’s work, uncovering materials which were taken up and transformed in the making of the novels, the stories ...”