In the centenary year of the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain, a new history of France by Britain's premier historian of France, at a moment when via the Euro, development of the European Union and the Tunnel, Franco-British destinies are more than ever intertwined, yet in so many other ways, immigration, the Gulf War for example, the two countries are at odds. With FRIEND OR FOE Horne follows up his recent SEVEN AGES OF PARIS (Macmillan, 2002), -'his most outstanding work,' writes Maurice Druon. 'He has perfectly grasped the wavelike contiunum in France's destiny, which travels incessantly from the peaks to the troughs.' Thus his history is 'idiosyncratic and schematic, a personalised interpretation of French history, swinging between heights and depths; cycles of illusory pursuit of 'la gloire' so often followed by hubristic disaster, and in turn miraculously swift recovery, and cultural triumph.' Horne gives a special focus on crises and dramas and personalities. He reflects on the state of the Franco-Brit 'Special Relationship' over the centuries. He will consider, in Epilogue, the proposition: is entente or rivalry, if not emnity, the natural status?F RIEND OR FOE takes a chronological approach.
