This long interview, recorded with the Swiss critic Pierre Courthion when the artist was recovering from an operation in bed during the Nazi Occupation, was never published - until now.
The distinguished historian uses neglected sources to present CdeM as a much-traduced campaigner for the peaceful coexistence of Catholics and Protestants, and as a patroness of the arts.
1870 was a cultural Golden Age, but it was also the background for the Dreyfus Affair and the violence of the Commune. This panorama is shown through the eyes of the age's personalities.
The role of surrealism and the cultural milieu of Paris in the 1940s helped inspire Boulez's emotional and radical music. CP's last book - on Eric Satie - was excellent.
In less than a month in 1870, the Prussian army invaded France, captured Napoleon III and changed the balance of world power. Its success had far-reaching effects...
Why was Cezanne revered by Rilke and Beckett, Picasso and Matisse? And does that early modernity speak to us now? An illustrated, ravishing study of Cezanne's uneasy art by the great emeritu... read more
Artisan trades of Paris - a ribbon maker, the boiseries of Feau et Cie, pastel crayons still rolled as they were in the time of Degas, etc., presented by a designer, artist and shopkeeper. M... read more
A panoramic account by the distinguished Harvard historian of five generations of a French provincial family originally from Angouleme, crammed with stories and archival research. ER has a d... read more
Catalogue from Dulwich Picture Gallery in collaboration with theMus?e Marmottan Monet: it seems unbelievable but this is the first exhibition of Morisot's work in Britain since 1950!
"I have borne the musket of a soldier, the traveller's cane, and the pilgrim's staff: as a sailor my fate has been as inconstant as the wind: a kingfisher, I have made my nest among the wave... read more
Gloriously funny memoir by a Minnesotan food writer about moving to an unpretentious village in the Languedoc with his wife and two aghast children. Hoffman has previously won the James Bear... read more
Leadership and moral compromise in Occupied France, seen through the lens of P?tain's trial in 1945. Julian Jackson is superb on the French Occupation and his biography of de Gaulle was magi... read more
A brilliant hour-by-hour recreation of what happened on 27 July 1794, from the midnight when Robespierre was in full control to the midnight when he was on the run.
Following the catastrophe in which Henry's heir was drowned, England sank into a terrible civil war in which English, Normans, Scots and Welsh competed in the ancient game of thrones.
For those who would sell their soul for an éclair. Mille-feuilles for autumn, croissants for Sunday mornings, crêpes for tea, cakes and puddings so sublime your hips will forgive you.
A biography of Marguerite Steinheil (1869-1954), who ascended the social ladder in Belle Epoque Paris on the rungs of many lovers, until a night in May 1908 when her husband and mother were ... read more
Recounts the author's quest for Adele Hugo, who followed the object of her (unrequited) love, a British soldier, to the Caribbean, and then returned to live out the rest of her days in a Fre... read more
Irreverent, witty and often barmy novel about how people make sense of war. Begins in 1940 with a young woman running naked down the boulevard du Montparnasse.
An Alpine hotel with a room missing, a private bank in Switzerland, skullduggery over an inheritance, a ravishing young woman - just some of the layers in this fiendish onion of a novel.
The spark for this remarkable memoir was a scribbled list of paintings that belonged to the Parisian author's great-grandparents - Degas, Renoir, Monet, Tiepolo etc - of which she knew nothi... read more