“... that we can understand. It reminded me of the opening of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), where the French woman talks about all she has seen in Hiroshima and the Japanese man responds: ‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’ Marines marching in Danang in 1965. Is it a sign of civilisation that we want to tell the story of our disasters without breaking ...”

“... a startling and unlikely candidate: a translation of a mystical meditation into English from French made by Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen. The Glass of the Sinful Soul, as she called it, was not an original work, but a good pupil’s exercise, undertaken in 1544 at the age of 11 as part of her lessons. A long prayer by Marguerite de Valois, Queen ...”

“... well and the best course is surely to acknowledge this, as in the life of Butler by Anthony Howard and that of Macmillan by Alistair Horne. The alternative strategy is that adopted by Rhodes James on Eden: to defend his hero on every conceivable count, from geopolitical insight (Eden alone discerned the scale of the Soviet menace) to personal foibles ...”

“... fields of battle. Nor is Fussell very convincing about what he calls ‘Prole Drift’ – the ‘Howard Johnsonisation’ which is turning the wine of American life into Gatorade. Was it not ever thus? If Fussell thinks it’s all getting worse and worse, when does he think was the Golden Age in which America wasn’t, by the standards of a Donald T. Reagan ...”

“... at female figures of the past. King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant (2007) was about Henrietta Howard, long-service mistress of George II, while Elizabeth’s Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen (2010) dealt with Elizabeth’s mother, sister and female competitors. Her co-authored history of royal weddings, The Ring and the Crown, came out somewhat ...”

“... Gipps had been given the Governorship of New South Wales as a reward for managing rebellious French settlers in Canada a couple of years earlier. Ultimately, no one in the Imperial administration wanted a Boston Tea Party in Sydney Harbour, even if it meant diluting Whig liberalism to appease the locals. Gipps had, it seems, a more than dutiful ...”

“... which went on a lot longer than the last fortnight of June – on harvests across Europe. Luke Howard, a chemist in Tottenham who in his Essay on the Modification of Clouds (1803) had distinguished the cirrus, stratus and cumulus types, began keeping a detailed record of London’s weather in 1807. He maintained it until 1819, publishing his findings as ...”

“... and its press. It’s proof, as Dorothy Wellesley wrote, that as ‘foreigners, especially the French, tell us, we have never acquired the adult mind.’ 18 February. Ned Sherrin’s memorial service at St Paul’s, Covent Garden. A friendly service interspersed with songs, some from Sondheim, some from Sherrin and Brahms, but with none of them as tuneful ...”

“... Hartley – in the Spectator, I suppose; Hartley had a great nose and a fine ear for things French, and he let the British in on his finds – I can’t think that there is anyone around today who does this work so well. Waiting for Godot, as the world knows, opened at the Arts Theatre on 3 August 1955. I attended it with impatient young up-and-coming ...”

“... Museum, which displays some interesting affinities in style to Donatello) by the painter Henry Howard. Thus Pope-Hennessy recognised the design. But he also knew when the bronze was made, or at least when it was given to its first owner. This was because of research carried out on a different sculpture of the same period: the impressive marble portrait, in ...”

“... Pagoda’. This monologue also concerns the anxieties of a thwarted idealist – this time a French Duke, whose ambition to build a perfect edifice must always suffer procrastination. ‘Tomorrow I will order stones’ is both the first and the last line of the poem. ‘The Duke’s Pagoda’ might be read as a companion-piece, or counterstatement, to ...”

“... formative influence on Nolan, as though he was reporting on a group encounter session: ‘The French would describe the relationship as a ménage à trois, although it was much less formal, having a freedom where all kinds of permissiveness were accepted as part of the total physical and intellectual experience.’ Nolan has made a career in the ...”

“... time as farce line, but his astonishingly prescient analysis of the reactionary behaviour of the French peasantry during the Bourbon and July monarchies. Though the 1789 Revolution and Napoleon had liberated the peasants from their landlords, the next generation of peasants was left to confront the agricultural market from small private holdings that could ...”

“... claimed that he had written Madame Bovary because he ‘hated Realism’. Nodding to a different French master, Maupassant notes that most of mankind’s ills come from ‘the dread of being alone’. And he himself shares that dread, which is why, even in nine days, he shuttles between afloat and ashore. He hates receiving letters, which ‘tie me ...”

“... forgotten: Jean Baret, botanical assistant, was Jeanne Baret. Nor the sad tale of La Pérouse, the French answer to Cook, who set sail with ships that were ‘almost floating laboratories’ and vanished after leaving the newly arrived British colonists at Botany Bay. ‘Is there any news of La Pérouse?’ asked Louis XVI on the eve of his execution. The ...”