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“... 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 ...”

“... recently, a very competent and balanced article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography by Howard Leithead. Naturally, Hutchinson’s readers are not expected to be interested in the Eltonian and post-Eltonian debates, rumbling on through a forest of monographs and crackling in the dense undergrowth of articles in the specialist journals. There is no ...”

“... Senghor had always wanted the two countries to have a federal relationship. Senegal sided with the French against the FLN in Algeria and opposed its bid for independence at the United Nations. And Senghor appointed French, not African, advisers to his new government. ‘We asked for the Africanisation of the top ...”

“... a queasiness that has to do with women: ‘He would feel afflicted by hand mirrors, of Celtic or French design, with sea-shell or gemstone-topped finials, ovular in their shapeliness; by broken morning rolls, soft silken purses; by hammocks swaying in the breeze, wash-basins, urinals, drains, sewers: these bothered him.’ Emilio, the youngest offspring and ...”

“... may be at once their real-life selves and their imaginary roles. Early in the book we hear the French-master’s reminder: ‘Ils ne sont pas des vrais opéras, ces pièces de Lully, plutôt des masques ou des pièces de théâtre avec musique.’ A dozen pages later. Piers has pruned this: ‘the Lully operas are all pièces de théâtre avec ...”

“... on the original Brink’s Boston robbery, then the biggest cash haul in history ... We watched the French classic Rififi and saw ourselves drilling through the ceiling of Mappin and Webb’s Paris branch ... ’ It’s more than 30 years since the Great Train Robbery (it picked up the capital letters shortly after it ceased to be called, rather more ...”

“... we should go. He was struggling to finish his novel Manuela (later made into a film, with Trevor Howard in the lead), and we were very short of cash. I suspect that he was also being pressed by several creditors. What better way to deal with all these problems than to sublet the wing of the large house we were renting, and move to Yugoslavia for three ...”

“... is then enlivened by the regular appearance of Wittgenstein on wheels. Philip Thody and Howard Evans, in their bonhomous Faux Amis and Key Words, are happy to have Wittgenstein say, just like that, that the meaning of a word is its use. But Wittgenstein did not think the matter that simple. Burchfield prefers the more ample and flexible thought of ...”

“... of misquoting ‘They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace’). The translations from the French are slovenly: in a dedication an English woman should not write and an English-speaking French woman would not write, ‘To my husband, who I would love even if he were not my husband’ – Who whom? Would should? ...”

“... floor or on the family pet. No Prince Charming ourselves, we will try not to think that we may be french-kissing a frog. ‘What will happen to social touching,’ asks Mr Rheingold, ‘when nobody knows where anybody else’s erogenous zones are located?’ Reading the personals on the electronic noticeboard (Blocked belletrist seeks triste belle, Oralist ...”

“... demanded that the old be eliminated. ‘I am dynamite,’ Nietzsche bellowed. Echoing this, the French incendiary Louis Aragon remarked that he could think of nothing more beautiful than a church and some dynamite. The immediate enemy was of course the beefy bourgeois, defender of property and social order, with his fixed ideas about beauty, truth and ...”

“... that usually ensued. When the abolitionist journalist and underground railroad activist Sydney Howard Gay interviewed fugitives who passed through his office in New York City in the 1850s he found that the threat of sale was a major reason for the decision to run away. Although most Americans today acknowledge the centrality of slavery to antebellum ...”

“... John, off to France to be civilised. There, at Blois and Angers, Buckingham learned how to speak French, fence and ride: the skills of a courtier. On his return, he found a mentor in Sir James Graham, a gentleman of the privy chamber (and a former favourite himself). While away from court on progress, James stopped at Apethorpe in ...”

“... once as ‘Great Books got down to Pure.’ 17 February. Catch part of BBC2’s celebration of French cinema and note how much more nostalgic and redolent of the past are these French clips than those from British films of a similar period; Les Enfants du Paradis, for instance, the first ...”

“... and still be a committed Cold Warrior. As he says, ‘whether we had a right – any more than the French before us – to pursue by fire and steel in Indochina the objectives our leaders had chosen was a question that never occurred to me.’ His parents were professionals, of Russian Jewish ancestry but born in the US, and devout Christian Scientists. He ...”