1000 Years of Annoying the French

Product Information

So how did it happen that de Gaulle received Churchill's support? Well, he didn't. Not from Churchill himself. «But the British Cabinet, headed by Attlee and Eden, urged Churchill not to withdraw support from de Gaulle. The ministers said such a radical policy change was dangerous and cast doubt on some of the unfavorable reports about de Gaulle. ... The War Cabinet had the final word, and Churchill agreed to Britain’s continued championing of de Gaulle.» Verrazzano must have been turning in his grave. (Except that he didn’t have one because he’d been eaten.)” The author also concludes this book by saying: “we can proudly affirm that, right down at DNA level, we’re not the same as the French. Vive la différence! (Long live the difference!)” Which honestly summarizes the essence of the problem, not just of the French/British conflicts. French and British history overlaps so much during the last thousand years, it’s impossible to separate one from the other. And yet some people still see things as “us” versus “them.” What this book should have concluded with is by saying that we’re all human. We all make mistakes. What’s done is done. Let’s learn from our mistakes and move on from them. It’s never been “us” versus “them.” It’s just been “us” the whole time, fighting amongst each other. And now it’s time to put our differences aside and start working together as one people, living together on the same planet and facing the same problems.

Clarke sets the record straight, documenting how French braggarts and cheats have stolen credit rightfully due their neighbors across the Channel while blaming their own numerous gaffes and failures on those same innocent Brits for the past thousand years. Deeply researched and written with the same sly wit that made A Year in the Merde a comic hit, this lighthearted trip through the past millennium debunks the notion that the Battle of Hastings was a French victory (William the Conqueror was really a Norman who hated the French) and pooh-poohs French outrage over Britain’s murder of Joan of Arc (it was the French who executed her for wearing trousers). He also takes the air out of overblown Gallic claims, challenging the provenance of everything from champagne to the guillotine to prove that the French would be nowhere without British ingenuity. And to everyone at Susanna Lea’s agency for their role in making this whole histoire possible. ‘The English, by nature, always want to fight their neighbours for no reason, which is why they all die badly.’ From the Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris, written during the Hundred Years War” This was absolutely hilarious, I couldn’t stop laughing at parts. It was written in a conversational manner and I rather liked that. It did make me question some of the facts, but I did my own research on the facts I questioned, and they were all right. As tongue in cheek as the title sounds, this is an informative history book that charts 1000 years of Anglo-French mutual adoration loathing. Stephen Clarke leaves no stone unturned as he charts events surrounding the momentous events from history involving the two countries.This book should be required reading for anyone who wants a better understanding of the history that exists between England and France - and essential for anyone who collects fascinating trivia. I always knew that the Norman's weren't French but it was interesting to discover that Napoleon was,technically,Italian and that baguettes and croissants originated in Austria!

Journey across China’s epic history—through millennia of early innovation to modern dominance. And upcoming from The Shortest History Series— The Shortest History of England! Clarke describes a broad range of amusing encounters between the Brits and the French. Some of the examples were quite unconvincing though, in my opinion. For instance, his use of Voltaire was quite ambivalent. At first Clarke uses him as an important example for French disinterest in Canada, but later on he writes a whole chapter on Voltaire not being representative for his fellow countrymen. Which is fine, but then don’t use him as a French example in other chapters. I also was a bit troubled by the guillotine. Clarke points out that the Brits already had a similar invention called the Halifax. That may be so, but unless Guillotine used this Halifax for his own design, I don’t really see the point. Did Guillotine even know of the existence of this machine at all? Were these machines totally identical? The French, in the person of Guillotine, did invent the guillotine, because it was his prototype that was used during and after the French Revolution. That the Halifax resembled this machine is in this case not really an argument. Lastly, I found the comparison between France and some British islands during WOII idiotic. The situations differ way too much to make a sensible comparison between the two. A whole country being invaded by their ‘archenemy’ or a few islands that were given up with some shoulder shrugging, well sentiment could be a bit different, don’t you think? I could go on stating the other way that the Guernsey resistance did a terrible job on blowing up railways (do they have a railway there?) comparing to their French equivalents. There was almost no resistance on the islands, so compared to the French the islanders were a bunch of Nazi-sympathizers…right? (This is just to show how stupid you can make the argument)

Retailers:

To give the simplest of examples – go into the British Embassy in Paris, and what do you see in the first anteroom you enter? A grand portrait of the Duke of Wellington, the man who effectively ended the career of France’s greatest general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Essentially, a two-century-old defeat is brandished in the face of every French visitor to Britain’s diplomatic headquarters … in France’s own capital city. Fun read, full of trivia and some not so trivial bits of information. There are two sides to any arguement, and we've been argueing for about a 1000 years.

We Brits feel no resentment about 'losing' our American colonies. We're quite fond of independent Americans, and see them as distant cousins who can't spell our language properly. We've cooperated with America pretty amicably on projects like liberating Europe and inventing pop music. And we have no desire whatsoever to try and govern Texas.” This is a very French trait. Today, if a big manufacturing company is in trouble, it will parachute in a graduate of one of France’s grandes écoles, someone who has studied business theory and maths for ten years but never actually been inside a factory. The important thing to the French is not experience, it is leadership – or, more exactly, French-style leadership, which mainly involves ignoring advice from anyone with lots of experience but no French grande école on their CV.” So from that point of view it gives great pleasure to hit the French with la baguette de l'histoire. Clarke's witty writing helps a lot. But it is not thoughtless bashing, Clarke's book actually hits upon an interesting topic: the way national identities are constructed and how historical events are greatly distorted in that process. We and the other. You could easily write a book about every country in Europe and the ridiculous deviations of history. The most interesting example in this book is obviously (to me) the story of Jeannne D'Arc. It is rather hilarious how the national memory erases the fact that the poor girl was sentenced to death by her own people for wearing trousers. Mon Dieu! If you are really interested in the historical field of national memory I would highly recommend The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm. I found the bits about the channel tunnel and entering the EU particularly interesting, because those are bits that I really knew very little about and -- given Brexit -- are quite timely. Research for The French Revolution and What Went Wrong took him deep into French archives in search of the actual words, thoughts and deeds of the revolutionaries and royalists of 1789. He has now re-emerged to ask modern Parisians why they have forgotten some of the true democratic heroes of the period, and opted to idolize certain maniacs.Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066 ... Calling a tenth- or eleventh-century Norman a Frenchman would have been a bit like telling a Glaswegian he’s English, and we all know how dangerous that can be.” One of the most frequent questions I get when doing readings and talks is: why is there such a love-hate relationship between the French and the Brits? To write this, I followed my nose through whole libraries (both online and off), hunting through 1000 years of history to produce a chunky tome that tries to set the record straight about the long tragi-comedy of relations between the French and all us English-speakers.

Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English.” This is a great introduction to anybody wanting to understand the peculiar relationship between two countries separated by a 30 mile stretch of water and 1000 years of colourful history. This is probably the most annoying thing of all to the French. Not only do we pronounce the battles incorrectly (Crécy should be ‘Cray-see’ and Waterloo ‘Watt-air-loh’), with Agincourt (‘Ah-zan-coor’) we even get the spelling wrong.” Harold didn’t need to hire expensive lawyers to dream up a credible defence, though – what hostage is going to refuse to take an oath to a man who is holding him hostage? And what jurisdiction did this Norman foreigner have in England?”So from that point of view it gives great pleasure to hit the French with la baguette de l'histoire. Clarke's witty writing helps a lot. But it is not thoughtless bashing, Clarke's book actually hits upon an interesting topic: the way national identities are constructed and how historical events are greatly distorted in that process. We and the other. You could easily write a book about every country in Europe and the ridiculous deviations of hi