Author:Isabelle Tombs,Robert Tombs
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.
An outstanding study of a three-century love-hate relationship... hugely readable
—— Andrew Roberts , Sunday TimesEpic, instructive and engaging
—— IndependentAn intellectual feast
—— Times Literary SupplementDeftly written and meticulously researched... packed with detail and anecdote
—— John Thornhill , Financial TimesWell-written and thoroughly researched... There is as good an account as you could want of the rivalry in the 18th century...and of the Napoleonic wars that took the story into the 19th... A satisfying and intelligent book, packed with information and provoking in its assertions and conclusions
—— Simon Heffer , Daily TelegraphThis is an important book... Gripping, magnificently informative... with a delicious streak of dry humour
—— Adam Thorpe , GuardianA thoroughly revealing insiders account
—— OldiePowell is surprisingly indiscreet with his anecdotes and asides, which give intriguing glimpses into ministerial chicanery. Absorbing and entertaining, his memoir also has the topical interest of showing scant period critique Rupert Murdoch's empire
—— James Urquhart , Financial TimesThere's a refreshing directness to this gloriously indiscreet political memoir. The merit of it is precisely that it lacks the intrusive ego of the big politician
—— Dominic Lawson , Sunday TimesIf ever anyone was perfectly placed to turn over the stones on the personal traumas of the major player of the Blair era it is Powell... an intriguing and intelligent treatise on the exercise of power.
—— The TimesWhat makes his memoir so absorbing as it swings from clever phrase-making and thoughtful contemporary history to wince-inducing self-analysis, is that he is the first of a generation of politicians to conduct their craft as if observing themselves from an amused an admiring distance - and then to write about it. No recent politician has examines his own motives and psychology quite so candidly
—— John Rentoul , The IndependentIt is the small revelations about the character of Blair that make this book worthwhile
—— Ross Clark , The ExpressIt's a gripping insight into the ex-PM's ten years of power . . . It will take a lot for many people to read his own take on the rise and fall of New Labour, but those that do might be reminded of the charm and vision that swept him to power
—— News of the WorldI have read many a prime ministerial memoir and none of the other authors has been as self-deprecating, as willing to admit mistakes and to tell jokes against themselves
—— Mary Ann Sieghart , The IndependentPaints a candid picture of his friend and rival, Gordon Brown, and of their relationship
—— Patrick Hennessy , The Sunday Telegraph
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