The essays grouped together here reflect a career-long preoccupation with aspects of modern French culture. These range from the canonical (no French or indeed European film-maker is more universally admired than Renoir; few screen actresses have aroused such strong feelings as Arletty), by way of the ascetically philosophical (whereof it would be difficult to find a more striking example than Simone Weil) to the basely if not gluttonously material (the regional cooking of Lyon). The fait divers - the Papin sisters' crime - rubs shoulders here with the ideological spat - the querelle between Badiou and Marty - in a collection whose unifying theme, paradoxically, may be said to be its eclecticism.

Keith Reader was an undergraduate student at Cambridge and was awarded his DPhil at Oxford, for a thesis on Stendhal. He spent three-and-a-half years in France, deepening his knowledge of the country and its culture. There followed a long period in post at Kingston Polytechnic-then-University, where he had the opportunity to develop pioneering courses in theory and cinema. Professorial appointments followed at the universities of Newcastle and Glasgow. Keith Reader is currently Visiting Emeritus Professor at the University of London Institute in Paris.