An end to cordiality

On the first page of this book there is a sentence so extraordinary that I had to read it several times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing up.

On the first page of this book there is a sentence so extraordinary that I had to read it several times to make sure my eyes weren’t playing up. Despite what the English and French may say about one another in public, writes Stephen Clarke, the truth is that ‘we find each other irredeemably sexy’. If only this were the case. Alas, as the would-be English Lothario bruised by yet another dismissive ‘Non!’ knows only too well, the traffic tends to flow in just one direction.

Mercifully, Clarke is a lot less even- handed in his history of Anglo/French relations. At the heart of it is one eminently palatable — for us, anyway — contention; namely that everything good that has happened between our countries over the last millennium has been down to English ingenuity and decency. Whereas everything bad . . . Here the impartial finger points unswervingly towards French duplicity and sulkiness.

Take the murder of Thomas Becket. Traditionally, French involvement in Becket’s murder has been thought to be slim — non-existent even. However, Clarke does a valiant job of laying the blame on them. If Becket had not spent two years in France picking up all kinds of scurrilous ideas, he argues, Henry II would have felt no compulsion to send his knights to teach him a lesson. Why, the man virtually committed suicide by impaling himself on their swords.

The Hundred Years War? Plainly, the French started it, and then compounded the damage by proving themselves to be astonishingly bad losers. If you visit the site of the Battle of Crecy today, you will find a little plaque bearing the following explanation for the French defeat: ‘The troops were blinded by the sun, which was shining again.’