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.