“... at least to let her know where he was. He had already left London for a fortnight’s holiday in France with T.S. Eliot. This holiday has since become a part of Modernist folklore. It was the occasion on which Eliot, at Pound’s behest, delivered a parcel containing a pair of old brown shoes to a distinctly unappreciative James Joyce. The shoes apart, Eliot ...”

“... his own. Beauty is no absolute guarantee of truth or morality; art may illuminate or corrupt. As David Perkins points out in Modernism and After, Pound is incomparable amongst modern poets for the rhythmic subtlety of his evocation of sensuous beauty, of the play of light and shade. For Perkins, this lyricism is the redeeming feature of his poetry. He ...”

“... fuel to the controversy. At a time when right-wing populism has emerged as a serious force in France, Holland, Italy, Austria and elsewhere, the German Free Democratic Party is also trying to extend its share of the popular vote by appealing to xenophobic sentiment. Jürgen Möllemann, the party’s deputy leader, has compared the actions of Sharon’s ...”

“... he provides a wealth of examples of techniques, laws, institutions and so on which were created in France to manage the problem of childhood. Whether such developments also took place in Britain at the same time requires investigation, but the broad outlines of the argument can be seen here: for example, in the increasing interest in the surveillance of ...”

“... letters – the most famous containing Thorpe’s assurance that ‘Bunnies can (and will) go to France,’ Bunnies being his pet name for Scott – as well as bizarre accusations (Scott repeatedly claimed that Thorpe had stolen his national insurance card) and repeated efforts by the Liberal parliamentary party to get to the bottom of Scott’s increasingly ...”

“... books. Surely one cannot separate this process from Blake’s impassioned response to events in France: the division between the two phases is the outbreak and self-destruction of the French Revolution, as David Erdman demonstrated so many years ago. It is the urgency of Blake’s changing responses to these shattering ...”

“... year before Bonnie and Clyde; he will have been eight when Chinatown appeared, and ten or so when David Bowie recorded the song that gives this book its title. Specktor’s mother was a screenwriter whose career was short-lived; later she was a drinker who snarled at her son for asking her to stop. By then she was divorced from his father, who was a leading ...”

“... he claim that the country’s existence was at stake in 1956 when Israel colluded with Britain and France and grabbed Sinai from the Egyptians? It also involves acceptance of the ‘purity of arms’ claim, which, as the Israeli politician Uri Avneri admits, was a myth from the beginning. There was little chivalrous about the atrocities of ...”

“... writing is recognisably clean, clear and colloquial, only occasionally falling into what David Hare calls ‘the Esperanto patter of the higher mysticism’. From the start, Brook avoids ‘personal relationships, indiscretions, indulgences, excesses, names of close friends, private angers, family adventures or debts of gratitude’, though there is ...”

“... came naturally to Boswell, less naturally but effectively in the sentences of Adam Smith and David Hume, but at the cost of the reservation of the Scottish tongue for casual, domestic or low-life use. Yet, as Daiches reminds us, with an exceptionally happy choice of quotations, the literary endeavours of the upper class were accompanied by a genuine ...”

“... all queen-consorts: Eleanor of Aquitaine, who rebelled against her husband, Henry II; Isabella of France, who, with her lover, Roger Mortimer, deposed and murdered her husband, Edward II; and Margaret of Anjou, who, given that her husband, Henry VI, was incapable, demanded to rule as regent and then fought tenaciously for the succession of her ...”

“... pre-Fascist Italy, and which crippled that of the French Third Republic. As in Germany, Italy and France, the crisis began to make itself felt before the First World War. As in Germany, Italy and France, it was caused by the rise of an aggressive and self-confident working class, whose demands could not be satisfied within ...”

“... it looked as if Saunière was an agent for some group. This story, the subject of a paperback in France by Gérard de Sède and of a Chronicle film for BBC Television by Henry Lincoln, is the starting-point of the present book. In their investigation of the problems posed by the story, Lincoln and his co-authors begin with the Cathars, and the Cathars lead ...”

“... is the Texan cycling supremo who recovered from advanced testicular cancer to win the Tour de France five times in a row. One condition was imposed: the interview had to be conducted on bicycles. This seemed reasonable. The greatest cyclist since Eddy Merckx could not be expected to sacrifice training time to journalistic chatter. In any case, there was a ...”

“... but of a strong sense of his island’s history. He did not deny Progress its place in England and France, but he was sceptical about its application to Sicily. The indigenous forces, the forces of climate and environment which had shaped the island’s history and formed its people’s character, had strangled and would always strangle the fine schemes of the ...”