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"Spreading the News: The Illustrated Press," focuses on the new concept of the illustrated universal survey periodical that appeared early in the 1830s, first in England, then in France. It was enabled by technological advances such as the steam press, cheaper paper, wood engraving and stereotypes, as well as greater literacy among the citizenry. The earliest illustrated periodicals were published by social reformers in both countries who were attempting to raise the status of the working classes, but the medium soon attracted wealthier, more educated strata as well; within decades the illustrated press had spread throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Second World War challenged the well-established circulation of cultural practices between France and Britain. But it also gave individuals, communities, states, and aspiring governments opportunities to invent new forms of international cultural promotion that straddled the national boundaries that the war had disrupted. Although London became the capital city of the main external Resistance movement Free France, the latter struggled to establish its cultural agenda in Britain, owing, on the one hand, to the British Council's control over French cultural policies and, on the other hand, to the activities of anti-Gaullist Resistance fighters based in London who ascribed different purposes to French arts. While the British Council and a few French individuals worked towards prolonging French cultural policies that had been in place since the interwar period, Free French promoted rather conservative and traditional images of France so as to reclaim French culture in the name of the Resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses French thinking on the advisability of 2003 Iraq War. Controversy that divided the two sides of the Atlantic; Breakup of the Big Three alliance composed of the United States, Great Britain and France; Approaches of French leaders Francois Mitterand and Jacques Chirac; U.S. president George W. Bush's policy of deterrence of international terrorism; Cartesian obsession of the French over being right.