France: the backstory

Written by Reporter, Sept 2007

France: the backstory

As we've noted from time to time in these pages, the French are gratified when a foreigner shows some knowledge of their history. So what to read? Alistair Horne's An Anglo-Saxon History of France (UK; Phoenix) has an encouraging title, so can it satisfy the needs of someone wanting to know the backstory of today's France?

"Obscure characters"

Reservations first. The title is a bit of a puzzle. Alistair Horne is a Brit who writes out of "four decades of a love affair with France" but he makes little effort to relate his narrative to anything happening on the other side of the Channel except for very occasional and not really useful asides: the first instance of full nudity on a London stage was when Diana Rigg played Heloise (Abelard's squeeze). Well, fancy that!

This is a long book � some 500 pages � but the first third or so is a hard slog with all those obscure characters like Clovis, Fr�d�gonde, Dagobert et al whom you've likely never heard of and won't recall by next Friday. Horne's biggest fault in these earlier pages is to refer to all sorts of characters he's obviously as familiar with as he is with his cousin Mungo but without sufficient identification for the struggling Anglo-Saxon reader.

If (like me) your general grasp of French history only really kicks in with the Revolution it's from that point on that you'll appreciate Horne. He tells his story clearly and with enough analysis to increase the layman's understanding. He's especially good on the years after 1870, the First World War and after, the Occupation and what followed in 1945 down to the death of Mitterrand. The book's certainly worth its price for these sections alone and could be a useful source of reference. There aren't, sadly, many unexpected plums in Horne's pudding � those scraps of surprising information that can both entertain and illuminate � but he does note that when Mitterand was a prisoner of war in 1940 he distracted his fellow captives with a lecture on Lady Chatterley's lover!

Titles reviewed here can be obtained at local English bookshops