From Blenheim and Waterloo to 'Up Yours, Delors' and 'Hop Off You
Frogs', the cross-Channel relationship has been one of rivalry,
misapprehension and suspicion. But it has also been a relationship
of envy, admiration and affection. In the nearly two centuries
since the final defeat of Napoleon, France and Britain have spent
much of that time as allies - an alliance that has been almost as
uneasy, as competitive and as ambivalent as the generations of
warfare. Their rivalry both on peace and war, for good and ill, has
shaped the modern world, from North America to India in the
eighteenth century, in Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is still
shaping Europe today. This magisterial book, by turns provocative
and delightful, always fascinating, tells the rich and complex
story of the relationship over three centuries, from the beginning
of the great struggle for mastery during the reign of Louis XIV to
the second Iraq War and the latest enlargement of the EU. It tells
of wars and battles, ententes and alliances, but also of food,
fashion, sport, literature, sex and music. Its cast ranges from
William and Mary to Tony Blair, from Voltaire to Eric Cantona; its
sources from ambassadorial dispatches to police reports, from works
of philosophy to tabloid newspapers, from guidebooks to cartoons
and films. It's a book which brings both British humour and Gallic
panache to the story of these two countries, in sickness and in
health, for richer for poorer, in victory and in defeat, in
dominance and in decline.
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