Volume 31, Number 11 · June 28, 1984
Working-Class Casanova
By Robert Darnton
Will & Circumstance: Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution
by Norman Hampson
University of Oklahoma Press, 282 pp., $17.50
Journal de ma vie: Jacques-Louis Ménétra, compagnon vitrier au 18e siècle
edited by Daniel Roche
Montalba, 431 pp., 90 F
Sir Edward Spears tells the story of Winston Churchill in a bathrobe bursting on a group of French officers in the breakfast room of the Château du Muguet early in the morning of June 12, 1940, when the French and British governments were about to meet in a desperate effort to stop the fall of France: 'An apparition which they said resembled an angry Japanese genie, in long, flowing red silk kimono over other similar but white garments, girdled with a white belt of like material, stood there, sparse hair on end, and said with every sign of anger: 'Uh ay ma bain?' ' There was something reassuring about the bad French. Civilization may have been hanging in the balance, but the prime minister wanted his bath.
Review, 6380 words
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