1000 Years of Annoying the French

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That's preposterous! Churchill never liked de Gaulle (and vice versa)! The only truth is that the Americans wanted to bypass the Général and to establish an Allied (read: "all-American") government in France, but as of Churchill, better read this Associated Press summary: «It’s no secret Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle didn’t like each other. But documents released Tuesday reveal just how deep their antipathy ran with Britain’s prime minister at one point musing about eliminating the French general as a political force. ... Several of the documents indicate that Churchill wanted to withdraw Britain’s support for the man who later became France’s president. ... Churchill, who was in Washington, exchanged memos and telegrams with his Cabinet in London and is shown to agree with U.S. fears that de Gaulle was "too dictatorial" and an Anglophobe. The French leader "hates England and has left a trail of Anglophobia behind him everywhere," Churchill wrote. ... Churchill wrote in a telegram to his deputy, Clement Attlee, and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden on May 21, 1943. "I ask my colleagues to consider urgently whether we should not now eliminate de Gaulle as a political force." In another memorandum to Eden, Churchill includes intelligence information that he said described de Gaulle as "thoroughly unfriendly both to Britain and to the United States and that while affecting communist sympathies he had fascist tendencies."» I love this book! This is how history should be passed on - the book is full of fascinating historical facts all built round the "special" relationship we have with our neighbours across the channel. It documents the often fractious history between France and England, throwing up a lot of information about the ripple effect this relationship has had on world events. The section on early American history is particularly fascinating. 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. 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.» The humorous aspect of the book also gave it a very irreverent tone, which didn't bother me except that it too often derailed in salacious gossipy remarks that were often NOT entirely true or based in fact. And, of course, there's nothing humorous about goodness or kindness or noble deeds, so you will finish the book thinking there hasn't been a single moment of true courage or goodness or self sacrifice in a thousand years of history.

1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke - Goodreads

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) The narrative flows well and is littered with jokes such as those mentioned above. But this is not history dumbed down, it is as informative as any core text book. Who knew that modern champagne was invented in England, that Dom Perignon tried to remove the fizziness from the French stuff because the bottles kept exploding whereas the English went crazy for it and the fizzier the better? I realize that any book that gives a balanced view of history is going to irritate French people a lot. So I’m really sorry, France, but the 1,000 years of being annoyed by les Anglo-Saxons aren’t over yet …

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Despite it being a whimsical ride for the most part, it did drag from time to time, and I was glad to get it over with. There are far too many dad jokes in here for me. He’s a writer, not a comedian. He takes delight in pointing out that William the Conqueror was not French and that he loathed them as much as they loathed him and his barbaric Norman ways. On the other hand, I am French, and I have discovered at my expense that this book does exactly what it says on the cover: it annoyed me. With such an amazing portrayal of French hypocrisy and silliness I think “1,000 Years” would fit nicely on the book shelves of Francophobes. In it they will find a full supply of delightful anecdotes, giving them all the amunitions they need to silence the arrogant French. Here are just a few:

1000 Years of Annoying the French: (Revised edition) by

Last year I asked my f-list to recommend to me their favorite "new" book that they had read in the past year (by "new" I mean "new to them"). I don't remember who recommended me this one, but I'd thank them if I did! The thing is, this all just feels a bit disproportionate. I mean, like half the countries in the world right now have an independence day to celebrate their independence from the British. That’s something that I do feel could have at least been mentioned a bit more clearly, to balance things out, instead of focusing so much on what the French did wrong. Though I do appreciate that some mistakes the British made during certain conflicts are at least mentioned throughout the book.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. And the most interesting thing for me was that while researching this book, I found that our versions of the same events are like two completely different stories – the French see history through tricolour-tinted glasses and blame the Brits (and after about 1800, the Americans) for pretty well every misfortune that has ever befallen France. Sometimes they’re right – we have done some nasty things to the French in the past – but often they’re hilariously wrong, and I have tried to set the record straight. Many things traditionally thought of as French, such as the guillotine, champagne and William of Normandy, were not French. No one could doubt the depths of Stephen Clarke’s scholarship, or indeed his prejudice. However, his book, I suspect, is way too long even for the most rabid xenophobe, with the 1066-And-All-That-ish humour frequently buried beneath an extended history lesson. Only in the latter stages does it develop some real zip and zing.