Mobilise the Old Guard. They're sending in their historians now.

When Harry Lime finally steps out of the Vienna shadows, the entrance is shamelessly theatrical, yet so precisely timed that it feels inevitable. It's as though the whole film reels have been merely the long fuse leading to this one match-strike of a smile.

« Les Américains veulent que leurs présidents soient des saints le jour et des moines la nuit. Nous, nous préférons qu’ils soient intelligents le jour et vivants la nuit. » - André Malraux, Minister of Culture under de Gaulle when asked about the rumours of Kennedy's affairs.

Wife: "Rome wasn't built in a day." Me: You're absolutely right honey. Rome began as a cluster of huts on the Palatine in 753 BC. It wasn't until the reign of Trajan that it reached its greatest expanse. That's nearly 1,000 years! Wife:

« Dès le premier jour, dès la première heure, la France m’a adopté… Je me sentais plus chez moi à Paris qu’à Vienne. » - Stefan Zweig, Le Monde d’hier "From the very first day, from the very first hour, France adopted me… I felt more at home in Paris than in Vienna." Stefan

If you think that having children is a drag on your life, a drain on your aspirations, and mostly drudgery, @EricaKomisarCSW explains why: we have a generation of weak, fragile, pathetic, narcissistic parents, who think like the woman in red. Komisar doesn’t mince words…

« Le style est une manière simple de dire des choses compliquées. La Parisienne en est la preuve vivante. » - Jean Cocteau Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. The Parisienne is living proof of that.

I’m so looking forward to reading this book but with nauseous unease. It's not because it isn’t going to be well written and deeply well researched - which is a given from a great historian of the French Revolution like Keith Michael David. No, because it holds a mirror up to us

« Le Tour est une cathédrale roulante qui traverse la France pendant trois semaines et rassemble des millions de fidèles sur le bord des routes. » - Jean-Paul Ollivier (historian and cycling writer) "The Tour is a rolling cathedral that crosses France for three weeks and gathers

Candace Owens only skimmed the surface of the French plot to subvert America

This supposed Ferguson-Dalrymple historian death match is, in truth, little more than a storm in a dram of decent Islay single malt: lots of peat, a bit of smoke, and everyone still friends at closing time. I like them both too much, and rate their books too highly, to referee

"I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment... But it is one of the things we learn from the Fall: that there is a crack in everything, and that evil is ultimately self-defeating. And there is always good in

I don't know if the precise figures are accurate here, but the general conclusion that the Greeks left a far larger written legacy than anyone else in the ancient world seems plausible, which really highlights how special Greek civilization was. I think it also suggests that, no

John Hussey’s magisterial 2 volume 'Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815' is one of the finest modern accounts of the Hundred Days, a triumph of multi-archival scholarship that finally banishes the romantic fog of legend and restores the campaign to its full strategic and operational

« Je suis terrifié de voir mes prophéties réalisées. » - Aldous Huxley "I am terrified to see my prophecies fulfilled." In this rare interview, echoing themes from his dystopian vision in "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley, with the acuity of a seer, dissects the cultural

In Britain, several cherished landmarks lost to the Blitz were painstakingly rebuilt as near-perfect facsimiles: the Great Hall of the Guildhall (1954); the exquisite Wren interior of St Mary-le-Bow (1964); and a clutch of City livery halls - Mercers', Clothworkers',

26 years and one day after the anniversary of 1918, France has reclaimed Strasbourg. During the gigantic four-year struggle led behind General de Gaulle, the spire of your cathedral remained our obsession. We had sworn to fly the national colours there once again. It is done! -

I have absolutely no idea where this taken but this young woman, her face framed by a hood, is reciting from Racine's 'Britannicus' with a hypnotic fervour that transforms the mundane into the sublime. Each syllable spoken is a gem in the crown of French verse. Racine's poetry,