King of the charm offensive

There could scarcely be a more delightful way to remind oneself of the British and French statesmen who created the Entente Cordiale, signed on 8 April 1904, than to read this book. Ian Dunlop’s method of composition is unfashionable. It consists largely of the skilful selection of amusing passages from diplomatic memoirs and other works published during the last century, with no preference given to the latest research and certainly no attempt to make daring reassessments. This is history without the idea that we know better than those who made it; history where due respect is paid to the personalities involved, whose lives were set down in the ponderous volumes which gathered dust on our grandfathers’ shelves.

We feel as if Dunlop is showing us his library, and we share his pleasure as he reads out his favourite passages. The start of the book has a slightly inconsequential feel, but he is surely right to begin with the first, unsuccessful Entente Cordiale between Britain and France, early in the reign of Queen Victoria, who in 1843 made the first visit by an English monarch to French soil since 1520.