France

Joanna Richardson takes readers on a mid twentieth century architectural tour of Paris; the French capital, she writes, bears the signature of successive rulers.

In 1764, writes Stuart Andrews, during his successful Grand Tour, James Boswell, then aged twenty-four, visited two great European thinkers, who were, he wrote, far more interesting to him ‘than most statues or pictures’.

Patrick Turnbull describes how, during the two months that preceded his abdication at Fontainebleau, Napoleon performed ‘prodigies of genius’.

J.P. Harthan describes The Salisbury Book of Hours; compiled in Rouen about 1425, the prayer-book owes its name to one of the best English commanders in France.

Philip E. Burnham Jr. describes how the court of Clement VI at Avignon became a model of humanism and scholarship for princely courts elsewhere in Europe.

Joanna Richardson describes how the volumes of the Goncourts Journal record the intelligent scene in late nineteenth-century France.

Geoffrey Treasure describes how, at the height of the monarchy’s crisis in 1648-9, the Court party made mistakes that were fortunately matched by the follies of their opponents.

During the Peninsular War, writes Michael Glover, British and French often treated one another with humanity and courtesy.

J.J.N. McGurk profiles Roger Bacon; a 13-century Franciscan, with a reputation as a necromancer, who showed a remarkable combination at Oxford and in Paris of philosophic and scientific gifts.