That Sweet Enemy | Robert and Isabelle Tombs

For the British remain the Goddams, just as the French are the snail-eaters. These stereotypes were already in place in the 18th century; Victor Hugo restated them more elegantly in the 19th: ‘On one side precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, stubborn sang-froid. On the other, intuition, guess-work, the unorthodox, superhuman instinct.’ In the 20th century, Churchill and de Gaulle, each wildly popular in the other’s country, could not have more strongly played against type: ‘The tall Frenchman, cold, laconic, mordant, prudish, monoglot and arrogant … The chubby Englishman, ebullient, emotional, artistic, hedonistic and eloquent …’ These anomalies were internalised without difficulty — indeed, they were barely noticed, because the shared experiences of three centuries made the stereotypes so normative that they had, in effect, created their own reality.

Perception and reality are, of course, sides of a single coin. From Louis XIV and the struggle for continental hegemony, through the American, French and Industrial Revolutions, to the two world wars and the new struggle for continental hegemony embodied in the development of European unity, That Sweet Enemy, in exploring the relationship between France and Britain, in fact delivers an Olympian overview of the development of the modern world. Robert and Isabelle Tombs have produced a major work of historical analysis, written in a deceptively accessible style. It is witty, wise — and wonderful.