M. Flanby’s Holiday
French president François Hollande seems to find monogamy too bourgeois for his tastes but all these former lovers are proving de trop
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Au Revoir Les Clercs
It may seem like the French belletrist is a dying breed, but the modern-day public intellectual has always been something of a myth
French Lessons in Liberty
Alexis de Tocqueville saw that 19th-century America combated individualism through the art of association. Are there lessons here for Cameron's 21st-century Big Society?
All About Himself
La Carte et le Territoire by Michel Houellebecq
Mao’s Little Helpers
The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s by Richard Wolin
Horse Power
Russia Against Napoleon by Dominic Lieven
Not Tonight, Pauline
Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte by Flora Fraser
Paris: Prisoner of the Barbarians
‘In February 2007, a naked, emaciated, mutilated, charred and stabbed man is discovered near railway tracks in the Parisian suburb of Sainte Geneviève-des-Bois. He is taken to hospital where he is pronounced dead
Beacon of Liberty Amid Depression
Just over 70 years ago, a group of intellectuals met in Paris to revive liberalism. Their views have an eerie echo today
Amoral Equivalence
Beyond Terror and Martyrdom by Gilles KepelThe Case Against Israel’s Enemies by Alan Dershowitz
Faking a Killing
The world reacted with horror when it saw a 12-year-old boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers. But the footage, it transpires, told a lie