1000 Years of Annoying the French

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I realize that any book that gives a balanced view of history is going to irritate French people a lot.

The list is long because it being tongue in cheek, “1,000 Years” depicts a France that has nothing to be proud of. On hindsight, this is a really good book to get yourself familiar with the history of these two countries, even if you're not from either of them. I lived in Cherbourg for a short time late 80s too and loved it and they do have a cracking national anthem. During the Falklands War for example, the right wing press in the UK insisted that the French were helping Argentina because the equipment used in the invasion had been sold to them by the French.However, I liked how the book was split into sections and the actual information was very readable as well. I learned more European history reading 1000 Years of Annoying the French than I ever did in high school. His non-fiction books include Talk to the Snail , an insider's guide to understanding the French; How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) , an amused look at France's continuing obsession with Napoleon; Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France , a biography of Edward VII; and 1000 Years of Annoying the French , which was a number one bestseller in Britain. This is no dry history book, but a humorous recounting with lots of pithy statements and witty asides. Stephen Clarke takes a potted look at 1000 years of Anglo-French relations from the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066 to President Sarkozy’s visit in 2008 and reveals that all of France’s failures in those thousand years were due to the machinations of the Brits and France’s successes (few and far between, according to Clarke) were actually achieved by someone else who was distinctly not French.

Like everyone else, I always suspected that the mistrust had something to do with 1066, Agincourt, Waterloo and all that, but I felt that most of our battles were too far in the past to have much effect on the present.The book covers the disputes and arguments between les Anglais and the French, from William the Conqueror to present day.