“... to numerous sources and ploughed through plenty of old material, from the early involvement of France in the Israeli nuclear programme and the revelations of Mordecai Vanunu, the former technician from the Dimona nuclear plant kidnapped by the Israelis and now in jail, to the arrest of Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew who passed some 500,000 pages of ...”

“... Brigade in the later stages of the Civil War. He spent the years 1939-42 in an internment camp in France, where he joined the Italian Communist Party. On his return to Albania, he rapidly became the main Partisan military commander. He was universally recognised by friend and foe alike as by far the most able Partisan military leader. He led the forces which ...”

“... for burlesque, rather than for the tragic or pastoral mode of the works by Ingres and Manet and David which he takes as his sources. A visit to the Hôtel Salé in the Marais where the Musée Picasso opened a year ago is as exhilarating and depressing as a trip to the Royal Academy exhibition. Here, too, there are masterpieces from the artist’s own ...”

“... one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian.’ Of all the thinkers who emerged in postwar France and are now loosely – and unhelpfully – coralled into the collective named, variously, structuralism, post-structuralism or (stranger yet) ‘French Theory’, Deleuze is the least well known or understood in the English-speaking world. It is easy to ...”

“... non-discursive, philosophy. Heidegger’s work on Nietzsche has been influential, particularly in France, but to me these lectures seem to do no good to the understanding of Nietzsche, nor to gain anything from it, but mainly to be a hideous example of several things that Nietzsche explicitly and rightly hated. It is certain, even if not everyone has yet come ...”

“... it wasn’t altogether surprising that another gate opened, courtesy of Maurice Bowra and Lord David Cecil, to a fellowship at Oxford. The only begetter of the study of literary theory at Oxford, he became the subject’s best-known teacher there, the leading authority in the field in Britain, and one of its most acclaimed proponents in the world ...”

“... coastal defence, conscription and interoperability with US forces. Japan, Australia, Britain and France should be prepared to help. If all this sounds daunting, Pottinger notes: ‘There is evidence already that US support for Ukraine has in some respects improved US procurement for a war with China.’Pottinger argues that China is the major ‘propaganda ...”

“... different conferences to attend as the representative of the new moral order in Bavaria – one in France, one in Germany and one in Switzerland. He could have gone to Paris, to witness the start of the peace negotiations that were to culminate in August in the Treaty of Versailles. Alternatively, he could have gone to Weimar, where he was expected to attend ...”

“... again. This task took on a new urgency once it was clear that large, well-managed realms (like France) would always defeat small city-states (like Florence and Siena). Kings and their dynasties could legitimise the hold of these new, large-scale states over their subjects by giving them a human face (in the language of Hobbes, which came to be the language ...”

“... She exploited Austin’s role as the treasurer of Amherst College to wangle her own husband, David, into powerful university positions and forced him to build her a Queen Anne-style house just across from his family home. After his death she conned his surviving sister, Lavinia, into deeding her some land. But, perhaps most damning of all, Emily ...”

“... Back​ in 1954, the American critic Ernest Campbell Mossner brought out a Life of David Hume that was not only a pioneering work of scholarship but also a labour of love. Mossner wanted to rescue his hero from the romantic reactionaries who typecast him as a narrow-minded representative of the Age of Reason. In particular, he hoped to challenge the condescension of Thomas Carlyle, who dismissed Hume as an associate of Voltaire and the French philosophes, and a slave to the ‘obscurations of sense, which eclipse this truth within us ...”

“... comprised the widowed Queen Mary, her four surviving sons and one daughter. Edward, known as David, was his mother’s favourite. The heir, the best-looking, the most popular, he was spoilt beyond redemption. The second son, the Duke of York who became the reluctant king, was the self-effacing naval officer hampered by an acute stammer. Of the younger ...”

“... but divided in his national identity and allegiance, for, despite being passionately committed to France, he was granted French citizenship only after two years of war service, and two years before his death at the age of 38 of Spanish influenza. If he struck many of those who met him, from Alfred Jarry to Max Jacob to Picasso to Robert Delaunay, as larger ...”

“... shah’s ambitions for Iran to ‘become politically and economically co-equal with England and France before the end of this century’ were ‘well-known’.These ambitions informed Iran’s cultural policies. A country seeking to upend historic power relations needed institutions that rivalled those of its old colonial foes, and the circle around Empress ...”

“... it was nearly a miracle to return three weeks later to a book contract and a steamer ticket to France.’ It must be strange for a writer, or almost anyone apart from movie stars, sports heroes or heads of state, to have a biography written about them during their lifetime. This one appeared a couple of months before Ashbery’s death, at the age of 90, on ...”