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) From the Norman (not French) Conquest, to XXX, it is a light-hearted - but impeccably researched - account of all out great-fallings out.

Many things traditionally thought of as French, such as the guillotine, champagne and William of Normandy, were not French.Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066 ... Another thing that should not be left unsaid is the part about colonization. Because this book shines a big bright spotlight on all the notable mistakes the French made and even some of the successes the British achieved, but tries to be as brief as possible about everything the British did wrong. It is very important to understand that you don’t get to see the whole picture here. The British part is casually mentioned in a few sentences here and there, while the French part takes up multiple long chapters.

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. The text is as tongue in cheek as you would expect and there are giggles aplenty. The first big laugh I had was when Clarke described William II (informally known as Rufus) of England as "a medieval Paris Hilton" for his indulgences and a love of "make up, dresses and yappy little dogs". 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. William the Conqueror and Napoleon-the-dwarf (with very little body parts): they weren’t even French.Things have been just a little awkward between Britain and France ever since the Norman invasion in 1066. Fortunately—after years of humorously chronicling the vast cultural gap between the two countries—author Stephen Clarke is perfectly positioned to investigate the historical origins of their occasionally hostile and perpetually entertaining pas de deux. In this imaginative fable of ageing and the other stories collected here, F. Scott Fitzgerald displays his unmatched gift as a writer of short stories.