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“... but by the time Mendez got hold of them they had already been identified as Zurbarán’s work. In France, by contrast, his Saint Francis hung unidentified in a Lyon convent and was recognised only after the Peninsular War, when Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soults arrived home with 18 looted Zurbaráns and the artist’s reputation soared.Zurbarán was born in the ...”

“... to split open, threatening to reveal their juicy, red, pornographic interiors’. The House in France is Wells’s account of life with her mother, the journalist Dee Wells, and her stepfather, the philosopher A.J. Ayer. Using their holiday house in Provence as a starting point, she wanders between family stories, anecdotes of mid-century London society ...”

“... French Marquis buying some cast-off running horses at the Auction & having a great desire to go to France I embraced this Opportunity, & began to Enquire who this Marquis was, & whether he had occasion for a Servant.’ It wasn’t at all clear that the marquis did want one, but having rashly quit his job Hammond hung around outside his house in London for ...”

“... to Ian)? Was Barbara Skelton having an affair with the Polish war artist Feliks Topolski when Peter Quennell came onto the scene, still married to his third wife, Glur, but making Topolski so jealous that the men resorted to fisticuffs over Barbara? What made Janetta, still married to Hugh Slater, fall in love with Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, and would that ...”

“... government turned against those to whom it had previously offered asylum. By 1793, with France at war against a coalition of European powers, non-French nationals were hounded, imprisoned and expelled. In the spring of 1794 Robespierre stormed into the Convention and denounced Cloots for his links to the Vandenyver banking family, who were accused ...”

“... After Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, the former British colonies went to France. In due course, Australia was opened up by French settlement, with a British cultural residue which remained long after the new nation’s independence. Only in New South Wales did a British community survive in appreciable numbers ...”

“... fellow travellers trundling in their carriages across Europe. The first section covers the tour to France and Italy which Katherine, then 29, made with her Irish neighbours and contemporaries, Lord and Lady Mount Cashell. Setting off in November 1801, they, like many other Britons, were taking advantage of the peace brought by the Treaty of Amiens to see for ...”

“... even the names of cinemas were changed to downplay the country’s long-standing cultural ties to France and stress instead those to Germany: the Marivaux cinema became the Metropol, the Cinéma de la Cour the Kammer-Lichtspiele. Blatantly propagandistic films remained unpopular in occupied countries, with the key exception of Veit Harlan’s anti-semitic Jud ...”

“... Last week, in another part of the city, a human head turned up.’ The severed head which opens Peter Conrad’s first novel suggests that contemporary fiction might be defined by its increasing convergence with the weird tale, the story based on a deliberate disruption of the natural order. The head is anonymous, sealed in a plastic bag, and being used as a football by a group of boys ...”

“... dismiss the notion of civil defence against nuclear attack as absurd. Twenty years ago or more, Peter Cook in Beyond the Fringe made a delicious mockery of the notion that you should get into a paper bag in order to protect yourself against nuclear fall-out, and the Government’s recent pamphlet, ‘Protect and Survive’, caused both protest and ...”

“... is, as Professor Screech points out, a passing flick at the Council of Trent, which the King of France had forbidden his bishops to attend. It will be clear that Professor Screech’s book is a fascinating piece of scholarly detection. It draws on the work of many other scholars, some of whom are mentioned in the bibliography – which could usefully have ...”

“... in fact, or in intention, Protestant. As soon as it was decided, as it was before 1600, that France was to be a Catholic country, and the university of Paris a Catholic university, learning was extinguished in France. By Pattison’s own account, the seeds of this notion were sown in 1856, in the course of a ...”

“... and that many of these must be innate. This disagreement prompted a conference at Royaumont in France in 1975, organised by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini. Piaget and Chomsky gave the opening papers, and there followed a set of talks, some by outright supporters of one or the other of the two leading participants, and others by less committed people, most of ...”

“... The colour and lively handling were part of the legacy of 17th-century Flanders to 18th-century France. The broader gestures and stormy chiaroscuro which her English contemporaries favoured, and which came to them by various routes from Caravaggio, would not have suited her. The painter John Opie is reported to have found Vigée Le Brun’s pictures good in ...”

“... which begin next month will be different. On 10 June, Scotland will play Brazil at the Stade de France in the opening game. For the first time in eight years, English supporters, too, will be able to admire, or rail at, their team on the most important international stage. The media and advertising bonanza will last for more than four weeks. The final ...”