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.