Exercice Agréable or Tantalizing Taste
In the eighteenth century, the French Société des Gens de Lettres led by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, compiled their famous encyclopedia, announced as a “Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers” and written to offer a conspectus of all human knowledge. Composed in the same ambitious spirit is this exceptional work by Antoine Capet, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, who was head of British studies at the University of Rouen until he retired in 2014. For the last decade he has been working on Churchill, and this dictionary is the fruit of his labor.
No one should suppose that he has simply compiled a long book full of explanatory entries related, Churchill recommends chronology as “the key to easy narrative,” and it serves Capet well.
