Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English.” 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.

This book took me a while to finish because, like I do with nonfiction, I dipped in and out of it. While I did know about some periods of the 1000 years it was covering, I wasn't an expert enough to critique the information it provided in the book so I can't comment on the accuracy. However, I liked how the book was split into sections and the actual information was very readable as well. Stephen Clarke เป็นนักเขียนที่ถนัดการเขียนแนวเสียดสี ที่มีลีลาฉกาจหาตัวจับยาก หนำซ้ำยังรุ่มรวยอารมณ์ขัน ผมชอบการหยิบแกมหยอกของชาวอังกฤษ-ฝรั่งเศสแน่ล่ะว่ามันออกชังๆหน่อยแต่พวกเขาให้เกียรติกันและกันมากเลยนะ มันเป็นการจิก-กัดโดยไม่รุ้สึกถึงการ”เหยียด” ซึ่งทำออกมาได้น่ารักมาก น่ารักแบบที่คิดไม่ออกว่าเหล่าชาติในอาเซียนจะเขียนถึงประเทศเพื่อนบ้านได้น่ารักแบบนี้ ตัวผมอยากให้เรามีหนังสือประวัติศาสตร์ประเทศเพื่อนบ้านที่เขียนได้อารมณ์สนิทกันขนาดนี้บ้าง From the Norman (not French) Conquest, to XXX, it is a light-hearted - but impeccably researched - account of all out great-fallings out.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. Up your ass, Stephen! Up your ass. After all those "oh, but this French thing isn't French, it was borrowed from Britain, Austria or somewhere else!", maybe Stephen Clarke should have talked about how French Britain still is! Even if Guillaume le Conquérant (William the Conqueror) was a bastard, what happened and still happens today is that the House of Lords and the House of Commons are still French or Norman medieval, and endorsements to bills are made in Old French, using such phrasing: "Soit baillé aux Communes." "A ceste Bille les Communes sont assentus." "A ceste Bille avecque des Amendemens (or avecque une Amendement) les Communes sont assentus." "A ceste Amendement (or ces Amendemens) avecque une Amendement (or des Amendemens) les Seigneurs sont assentus." "Ceste Bille est remise aux Communes avecque des Raisons (or une Raison)." "Soit baillé aux Seigneurs." "A ceste Bille avecque des Amendemens (or une Amendement) les Seigneurs sont assentus." "A ceste Bille les Seigneurs sont assentus." And then, once royal assent is given, the law is announced by the Clerk of the Parliament in these words: « La Reyne le veult. » If this isn't hilarious, I don't know what is. 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 can’t begin to count how many times I’d read something and go google to find out more. I’ve been deep in rabbit holes daily. The chapters come with delightful sub-headings, such as "In India and Tahiti: France Gets Lost In Paradise: A selection of historical Frenchmen lose India, fail to notice Australia and give sexually transmitted diseases to Pacific islanders" and "How Britain Killed Off the Last French Royals: And the Victorians said, 'It was an accident, honest.' Three times."

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. 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. 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” A Finalist for the 2022 James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award and the 2022 IACP Award (International) 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)A laugh out loud hilarious and perceptive look at the history of England and France and their relationship for the past one thousand years. This is no dry history book, but a humorous recounting with lots of pithy statements and witty asides. I loved the humorous approach because it was not politically correct and because humor often allows you to get closer to the truth and reality of a thing.