Graham Robb deserves to be a French national treasure

This is a ceaselessly interesting, knowledgeable and evocative book about France over thousands of years. Is it at all likely to have been produced by a French writer? Though it’s about some deeply serious subjects, it’s very amusing; it makes no attempt to constrain itself within an overarching theoretical framework; it would be impossible to extract from it a grand statement beginning ‘The French are all…’; it is pragmatic, full of enterprising scholarly initiative and a gift for observation without intruding. Most strikingly, it’s a book about France in which the author has profitably spent a good deal of time outside Paris.

Perhaps my experience of French students of their own country is limited, but it is striking that Graham Robb has been able to disprove a few accepted truths by getting on his bicycle and going to take a look at stuff. I don’t suppose Michel Foucault ever thought of riding a touring bike up a mountain in the course of his research, and neither have most French scholars. In my view, Robb is a national treasure twice over – a British one, and he ought to be a French one too.

It is not quite an orthodox history. There are 18 chapters, in chronological order from the earliest Gauls to the eruption of the Gilets Jaunes protests. But it is not especially interested in covering the ground, and this is not the place to go for a narrative account of the Revolution or the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Instead, what we have are distinct episodes of particular interest. Some are recognisably grand subjects, such as Napoleon’s character, the medieval Cathars or the history and significance of the Tour de France. Other treatments are more indirect – for instance that of the immensely rich English prostitute who funded Napoleon III’s career.