“MEN AND WOMEN who did almost nothing for a large part of the year tend not to figure prominently in history books. Studies and museums naturally highlight enterprise and undervalue the art of remaining idle for months on end.” — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his… — Graham Robb Copy Share
“MEN AND WOMEN who did almost nothing for a large part of the year tend not to figure prominently in history books. Studies and… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“above all, simplify the French language and abolish irregular verbs – a measure that would have rescued countless schoolchildren from the despotism of pernickety pedagogues.” — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
Les Misérables etches Hugo's view of the world so deeply in the mind that it is impossible to be the same person after reading… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“Invalids were habitually hated by their carers. It took a special government grant, instituted in 1850 in the Seine and Loiret départements, to persuade… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“The paysans had no flags or written histories, but they expressed their local patriotism in much the same way as nations: by denigrating their… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“As the shabby section of the audience rose to its feet, waving its hats and food-wrappers, a rich, stale smell wafted through the auditorium.… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“For the rest of her life, she lives in a low, dark house of white stone. It has a wide tiled roof and a… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“In those days, long before, a view over the rooftops of Paris was an unaffordable luxury. The apartment he had shared with a mousy… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“effects of her husband’s lovemaking, but only one reliable method exists, and anyone who has come home after dark on the back road by… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
“highly codified and formal foreign language known as French – a language which, according to many French-speakers, almost no one speaks correctly. In the… — Graham Robb Copy Share Image
