“... The ludicrous Mr Kenneth Baker blames the Church, and in particular the Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, probably because he’s the only socialist in sight.22 February. A large crowd gathers outside Bootle Magistrates Court, to jeer as the vans carrying the two ten-year-olds accused of the toddler’s murder are driven away. One man eludes the ...”

“... film studies of the École normale supérieure and also works as a chef. It’s pleasing that the French verb cuisiner, used when she questions her grandmother, has such a close equivalent in the English word ‘grill’. She is both hindered and helped by her large and long-lived family (Betsy had ten siblings and six children), most of whom resist ...”

“... conference was to be held in Paris, but worried by the threat of demonstrations and incidents from French Zionist organisations, the Mitterrand Government requested that it be held elsewhere: France’s quid pro quo to the UN, which was actually entitled to hold the conference in Paris at Unesco’s extraterritorial headquarters, was to be full participation ...”

“... President Giscard d’Estaing with a dog (including teaching it to obey simple commands in French), and much about the comings and goings of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Roy Jenkins, Prince Charles and the like – plenty of material here for a comparative study of the discourteous and the bibulous, with suggestions of an inverse correlation ...”

“... in New Verse – ‘My only knowledge of Surrealism is derived from Mr Gascoyne’s books, a few French writers like Breton and Aragon, some paintings of Dali, Ernst and others, and from the pages of the Minotaur’). The writing is slick and smooth, well-egged and oiled, with a tang and a hint of salt, like a good mayonnaise. His two finest moments come in ...”

“... idle, self-pitying, cruel and unscrupulous. Nor were his brothers much better. Probably, as David Cannadine has written, the lives, loves and morals of George III’s children made them ‘the most unloved royal generation in English history’; though the previous one, the brothers of George III, must have run them pretty close. George behaved like a ...”

“... the lighter cavalry (Mlle de Scudéry, Voltaire, Alfieri, Nathaniel Lee, Gavin Hamilton, J.-L. David). However, Donaldson sharply registers the enormous popularity of the myth across the centuries, and the ways in which controversy has enlivened and enlarged it rather than killing it off. Readings of a myth become part of the myth, as Lévi-Strauss said of ...”

“... Jacobite army in 1745, used his considerable organising talents within it and ended his days in French service. He would probably have preferred to have spent his life in his chosen peacetime activity, organising a protection racket in the north-east Lowlands. Mr Lenman points out that the passionate hatreds of 17th-century Highland warfare has no real echo ...”

“... clearly carry weight, but not necessarily an overriding weight in every case. In the 18th century David Hume affirmed, entirely truthfully, that he fully believed, like everyone else, that the sun would rise on the following day, but meanwhile the famous critique of induction – the demonstration that we can have no reason for supposing that the future will ...”

“... Now ... Nay.’ ‘Nausea,’ I interjected, sinking into my shirt. ‘It’s Existentialist. By a French author.’ ‘Oh awa you and read books!’ he said, getting a bit red in the face. ‘Awa tae university or somethin’. It’s a wee lassie am lookin’ fur.’ We thought he was probably quite mad, and not at all attuned to the new way of doing ...”

“... that to accuse an ugly man of adultery was like charging an invalid with assault. All this led the French classicist Jean-Pierre Vernant to conclude that the Greek body was best seen, not as a lump of meat, temporarily animated by the soul, but as a source of energy and light, a corps éclatant. When the body was at its best, powerful attributes played over ...”

“... embarked on a fanciful scheme to incite an Arab revolt in Jeddah and Mecca, though against the French rather than the Ottomans. In contrast to the Turks, who were often denounced for degeneracy – swords, slippers and sexual excess, as Richard Cobden put it – the Arabs were often admired for manly simplicity. ...”

“... and it seemed inevitable that they would be tortured. The two defence counsel, George Bizos and David Soggot, brought in Kentridge and an urgent application, based on the evidence elicited from the prosecution witnesses, was made for injunctions forbidding the police to ill-treat them. The judge refused to treat the application as urgent, with the result ...”

“... mood of a particular time and class. His protagonists fret about la vie quotidienne (they use the French) – ‘What made us think that we could escape things like bankruptcy, alcoholism, being disappointed, having children?’ – as well as their feelings of political powerlessness. ‘I make small campaign contributions to the candidate of my choice and ...”

“... so intellectual supporters of the Iraq War – among them Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, David Remnick and other prominent figures in the North American liberal establishment – have focused their regrets not on the catastrophic invasion itself (which they all supported) but on its incompetent execution. They are irritated with Bush for giving ...”