He has now re-emerged to ask modern Parisians why they have forgotten some of the true democratic heroes of the period, and opted to idolize certain maniacs. 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. Images of dramatic encounters with les Français flashed before my eyes, until it got me to the point that I could identify the main cause: a traumatic experience from my childhood in which an extremely fat monsieur shouted at me for not having a ticket for the carousel. This is how history should be passed on - the book is full of fascinating historical facts all built round the "special" relationship we have with our neighbours across the channel. 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?

A laugh out loud hilarious and perceptive look at the history of England and France and their relationship for the past one thousand years.A millennium which shows that no matter the country, history is mostly about greed and back stabbing, which translates into political/economical alliances or in medieval times, marrying into another kingdom to increase one’s land and domination.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Maybe it was because that was where my interest lay more in the earlier periods of history but I found the last part of the book with De Gaulle fairly uninteresting, though I didn't know about any of it really. This is not just a book filled with subtle humour and facts galore, it is a veritable history lesson. I learned more European history reading 1000 Years of Annoying the French than I ever did in high school.Starting with William the Conqueror (who, contrary to what the French might claim, wasn't French at all, and died fighting the Paris-based King of the Franks) and going right up to the horrendous diplomatic gaffes inflicted on recent French presidents, I have sifted through our common history for tellable tales, and kept only the juiciest nuggets. I found the bits about the channel tunnel and entering the EU particularly interesting, because those are bits that I really knew very little about and -- given Brexit -- are quite timely. With A Year in the Merde, Clarke is arguably one of the earliest self-publishing success stories--it was discovered by French newspapers and garnered enough interest that he could sell the novel to international publishers.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. That may be so, but unless Guillotine used this Halifax for his own design, I don’t really see the point. What a wonderful way to understand the historical significance of the events that have shaped Anglo-French relations for the past 1,000 years.History is often looked upon as "boring" or "too-serious" and this is true in many cases, but as deep as humor has roots inside the humanity, a funny author can makes wonders. We laught at (while, in may case, loving beyond most others)their hoity-toity food and wine supping ways; they, in turn, are noted as ridiculing our stodgy, bland, unimaginative menus and beer swillinh culture. The 'corrections' to the French interpretation of events were often amusing and enlightening, but I began to wonder how biased the 'factual' corrections were. 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.