Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
1 When Is a Frenchman Not a Frenchman?
1066: the Normans cross the Channel to kick the Anglo-Saxons into shape for a 1000-year career of annoying the French.
2 French-bashing in Its Infancy
As performed by some great – and some frankly awful – Kings of England. (Queens were still illegal.)
3 The Hundred Years War: A Huge Mistake
The ‘hundred’ years from 1337 to 1453: more than just a mathematical error.
4 Joan of Arc: A Martyr to French Propaganda
The public roasting given to France’s patron saint, or what really happened in 1431.
5 Calais: The Last Last Bit of English Territory in France
The French town that was a British colony for 200 years, and the scene of Henry VIII’s greatest fashion moment.
6 Mary Queen of Scots: A French Head on Scottish Shoulders
When she was executed, no one was more annoyed than the French. Apart from Mary herself, of course.
7 French Canada, or How to Lose a Colony
French kings let the Brits steal the top half of a continent.
8 Charles II: The Man Who Taught Everyone to Distrust French Motives for Doing Absolutely Anything
The English fop who sought political asylum in Paris, betrayed his own country and then accidentally tricked the French into betraying themselves.
9 Champagne: Dom Pérignon Gets It Wrong
Proof that the French didn’t invent their national drink.
10 Eclipsing the Sun King
Louis XIV (1638 –1715), the French King with a giant bladder and an ego to match.
11 Voltaire: A Frenchman Who Loved to Get France in the Merde
The eighteenth-century French thinker who thought more of Britain than of France.
12 Why Isn’t America Called L’Amérique?
Which it might well have been, if the French hadn’t threatened to kill a British cow . . .
13 American Independence – from France
1776: the Brits weren’t the only ones getting booted out of America.
14 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.
15 The Guillotine, a British Invention
Another non-French idea.
16 The French Revolution: Let Them Eat Cake. Or Failing That, Each Other
The tragi-comic truth about Bastille Day, Marie-Antoinette and the impoverished aristos.
17 Napoleon: If Je Ruled the World
The rise of Bonaparte: soldier, emperor, lover of Josephine and creator ofthe French brothel.
18 Wellington Puts the Boot in on Boney
Napoleon’s downfall at the hands (and feet) of the Iron Duke.
19 Food, Victorious Food
The baguette, the croissant and le steak: the real story behind three quintessentially ‘French’ foodstuffs.
20 The Romantics: The Brits Trash French Art
How some hot-blooded Anglais stirred up French culture in the early 1800s.
21 How Britain Killed Off the Last French Royals
. . . and the Victorians said, ‘It was an accident, honest.’ Three times.
22 Why All French Wine Comes from America
The grape disease heroically cured (and, less heroically, caused) by the Americans.
23 Edward VII Has a Frolicking Good Time in Paris
‘Dirty Bertie’, the playboy prince who seduced France into signing the Entente Cordiale.
24 Britain and France Fight Side by Side for Once
World War One, in which English-speaking soldiers took French leave, used French letters and sang rude songs about the mesdemoiselles.
25 World War Two, Part One
Don’t mention Dunkirk.
26 World War Two, Part Two
Don’t mention collaboration or the number of French soldiers who actually landed on D-Day either.
27 Le Temps du Payback
From de Gaulle to Thatcher, or Chanel handbags at ten paces.
28 Napoleon’s Dream Comes True
The Channel Tunnel and some right royal gaffes that prove we’ve learned nothing from the past 1000 years.
Quotations
Mischievous things said by and about the French.
Illustration Credits
Select Bibliography
Further reading in English and français.
Index
About the Author
Also by Stephen Clarke
Copyright
Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory?
Non! William the Conqueror was a Norman and hated the French.
Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc?
Non! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers.
Was the guillotine a French invention?
Non! It was invented in Yorkshire.
Ten centuries’ worth of French historical ‘facts’ bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066…
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris, where he divides his time between writing and not writing. His first novel, A Year in the Merde, originally became a word-of-mouth hit in 2004, and is now published all over the world. Since then he has published three more bestselling Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail, an indispensable guide to understanding the French.
Research for Stephen’s novels has taken him all over France and America. For 1000 Years of Annoying the French, he has also been breathing the chill air of ruined castles and deserted battlefields, leafing through dusty chronicles, brushing up the medieval French he studied at university and generally losing himself in the mists of history.
He has now returned to present-day Paris, where he is doing his best to live the Entente Cordiale.
For further information on Stephen Clarke and his books, please visit his website:
www.stephenclarkewriter.com
Also by Stephen Clarke
A Year in the Merde
Merde Actually
Merde Happens
Dial M for Merde
Talk to the Snail: Ten Commandments for Understanding the French
For more information on Stephen Clarke and his books, see his website at www.stephenclarkewriter.com
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
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Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Stephen Clarke 2010
Stephen Clarke has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Maps and chapter decoration by Ruth Murray
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407067629
ISBN 9780552775748
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To the Crimée Crew for their thousand years of patience, and especially to N., who helped me through every battle.
Merci to my editor Selina Walker for her sense of history in reminding me constantly of my deadline.
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
‘We have been, we are, and I trust we always will be, detested by the French.’
The Duke of Wellington
A selection of English synonyms for ‘annoy’
Provoke, infuriate, anger, incense, arouse, offend, affront, outrage, aggrieve, wound, hurt, sting, embitter, irritate, aggravate, exasperate, peeve, miff, ruffle, rile, rankle, enrage, infuriate, madden, drive crazy/mad/insane, get up the back/on the tits of, bust the balls of, piss off.
All of these have been done to France, and more . . .
One of the most frequent questions I get asked when doing readings and talks is: why is there such a love–hate relationship between the French and the Brits?
The love is easy to explain: despite what we might say in public, we find each other irresistibly sexy. The hate is more of a problem. For a start, it’s mistrust rather than hatred. But why is it even there, in these days of Entente Cordiale and European peace?
Like everyone else, I always knew that the mistrust had something to do with 1066, Agincourt, Waterloo and all that, but I wondered why it persisted. After all, most of our battles were too far in the past to have much effect on the present, surely? So I decided to delve into that past and come up with a more accurate answer.
And having written this book, I finally understand where the never-ending tensions come from. The fact is that our history isn’t history at all. It’s here and now.
William Faulkner was talking about the Southern USA when he said that ‘the past is never dead. In fact, it’s not even past.’ But exactly the same thing can be said about the French and the Brits; no matter what we try to do in the present, the past will always march up and slap us in the face.
To give the simplest of examples: if you are lucky enough to be invited to an Anglo-French function at the British Ambassador’s residence in Paris, go in to the first anteroom and what do you see? A gigantic portrait of the Duke of Wellington, the man who effectively ended the career of France’s greatest general, Napoleon Bonaparte. Essentially, a two-century-old defeat is brandished in the face of every French visitor to Britain’s diplomatic headquarters . . . in France’s own capital city.
This is not tactless or provocative – relations couldn’t be better between the British Embassy and their French hosts – it’s simply there. Just as the battle between the sexes will never end (we hope), neither will the millennium-old rivalry between the French and anyone who happens to be born speaking English.
And the most interesting thing for me was that while researching this book, I found that our versions of the same events are like two completely different stories. The French see history through tricolour-tinted glasses and blame the Brits (and after about 1800, the Americans) for pretty well every misfortune that has ever befallen France. Sometimes they’re right – we have done some nasty things to the French in the past – but often they’re hilariously wrong, and I have tried to set the record straight.
I realize that any book that gives a balanced view of history is going to irritate French people a lot. So I’m really sorry, France, but the 1000 years of being annoyed by ‘les Anglo-Saxons’ aren’t over yet . . .
Stephen Clarke, January 2010