Tag: France

Mitsou by Colette

Mitsou by Colette

A funny thing happens when you hide a lieutenant, or indeed two, in your wardrobe. Mitsou is a performer in a Paris revue during the Great War, and the novella that bears her name opens backstage between acts, with the old stage manager trying to keep the young performers out of too much mischief and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2023/10/14/mitsou-by-colette/

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

The Man Who Walked Through Walls by Marcel Aymé

I wish I could remember who recommended The Man Who Walked Through Walls to me, I owe them a great big thank you. It’s a book I would never have found on my own, and I was completely charmed. The Man Who Walked Through Walls was originally published in French in 1943, reprinting stories that …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2022/03/12/the-man-who-walked-through-walls-by-marcel-ayme/

Die Jungfrau von Orleans by Friedrich Schiller

At the opening of The Maid of Orleans, as Schiller’s five-act verse tragedy is known in English, France is divided among three parties: English troops who have taken Paris and the north in pressing their king’s dynastic claim to the French throne, southern lands held by the Valois king Charles VII, and Burgundy in the …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/07/16/die-jungfrau-von-orleans-by-friedrich-schiller/

Postwar by Tony Judt

Two things stand out for me about Postwar, by Tony Judt. First, it is a stupendous historical synthesis that aims to tell a mostly political history of all of Europe — East and West, North and South — from 1945 through its publication in 2005. Second, I should have been writing reflections about it as I …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2017/06/16/postwar-by-tony-judt/

The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert

Of the half dozen or so books on the French Revolution I have read so far, this is probably the best one. Yet the Revolution continues to confuse and bewilder me. How could something that began so well turn out so badly? It began as a genuinely democratic movement, but soon degenerated into something far …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/11/02/the-days-of-the-french-revolution-by-christopher-hibbert/

Twentieth Century France by James McMillan

I read this book from beginning to end, and I have almost nothing to say about it, except that French history after Napoleon is pretty boring.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/18/twentieth-century-france-by-james-mcmillan/

The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France by R.J. Knecht

This book was BORING. But it was not entirely without merit. It educated me considerably on the degree to which religious strife has played a role in the history of France. One tends to think of France as a thoroughly Catholic country, but there was once a flourishing Protestant movement. It is tantalizing to speculate …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/09/26/the-rise-and-fall-of-renaissance-france-by-r-j-knecht/

A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman

Fourteenth century France seems to encapsulate medieval Europe in all its grandeur and folly. The Middle Ages seem to have been a time when everybody believed in Christianity and nobody practiced it. Likewise, they seem to have been a time when men were most warlike yet waged war with the greatest incompetence. After reading this …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2013/04/21/a-distant-mirror-by-barbara-tuchman/

Napoleon by Frank McLynn

This is the best and most balanced biography of Napoleon I have read so far. It contains much excellent scholarship and critical commentary; however, it also contains a lot of amateur Freudian analysis that is pure rubbish. While I am neither a warmonger nor an imperialist, I find it hard to read a biography of …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2012/02/20/napoleon-by-frank-mclynn/

Madame de Stael by Francine du Plessix Gray

The subject of this book is an extraordinary individual, yet I find myself disliking her. Mme de Stael was brilliantly eloquent, audaciously spirited, and a gifted writer, yet there is an overwhelmingly histrionic side to her personality that makes it impossible for me to take her seriously. There is much in her that seems to …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2010/05/02/madame-de-stael-by-francine-du-plessix-gray/