1000 Years of Annoying the French

Product Information

This book took me a while to finish because, like I do with nonfiction, I dipped in and out of it. While I did know about some periods of the 1000 years it was covering, I wasn't an expert enough to critique the information it provided in the book so I can't comment on the accuracy. However, I liked how the book was split into sections and the actual information was very readable as well. This is probably the most annoying thing of all to the French. Not only do we pronounce the battles incorrectly (Crécy should be ‘Cray-see’ and Waterloo ‘Watt-air-loh’), with Agincourt (‘Ah-zan-coor’) we even get the spelling wrong.” This book starts with the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings, where the Duke of Normandy (which is in France) had a very decisive victory against the British. It is explained that the naming of Normandy came from the Normans (Vikings) who settled there. This is all just to point out that the British may have lost, but not (just) to the French. Though technically, the invading army did come from France. This pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the book. The author also concludes this book by saying: “we can proudly affirm that, right down at DNA level, we’re not the same as the French. Vive la différence! (Long live the difference!)” Which honestly summarizes the essence of the problem, not just of the French/British conflicts. French and British history overlaps so much during the last thousand years, it’s impossible to separate one from the other. And yet some people still see things as “us” versus “them.” What this book should have concluded with is by saying that we’re all human. We all make mistakes. What’s done is done. Let’s learn from our mistakes and move on from them. It’s never been “us” versus “them.” It’s just been “us” the whole time, fighting amongst each other. And now it’s time to put our differences aside and start working together as one people, living together on the same planet and facing the same problems.

1000 Years Of Annoying The French PDF – PDF Read Download 1000 Years Of Annoying The French PDF – PDF

This is of course the Prince of Wales’s motto to this day, though subsequent princes have not adopted John of Bohemia’s custom of fighting while tied up and blind.” I can’t begin to count how many times I’d read something and go google to find out more. I’ve been deep in rabbit holes daily. He takes delight in pointing out that William the Conqueror was not French and that he loathed them as much as they loathed him and his barbaric Norman ways. Harold didn’t need to hire expensive lawyers to dream up a credible defence, though – what hostage is going to refuse to take an oath to a man who is holding him hostage? And what jurisdiction did this Norman foreigner have in England?”To write this, I followed my nose through whole libraries (both online and off), hunting through 1000 years of history to produce a chunky tome that tries to set the record straight about the long tragi-comedy of relations between the French and all us English-speakers. Clarke sets the record straight, documenting how French braggarts and cheats have stolen credit rightfully due their neighbors across the Channel while blaming their own numerous gaffes and failures on those same innocent Brits for the past thousand years. Deeply researched and written with the same sly wit that made A Year in the Merde a comic hit, this lighthearted trip through the past millennium debunks the notion that the Battle of Hastings was a French victory (William the Conqueror was really a Norman who hated the French) and pooh-poohs French outrage over Britain’s murder of Joan of Arc (it was the French who executed her for wearing trousers). He also takes the air out of overblown Gallic claims, challenging the provenance of everything from champagne to the guillotine to prove that the French would be nowhere without British ingenuity.

1000 Years of Annoying the French also Readers who enjoyed 1000 Years of Annoying the French also

This is not just a book filled with subtle humour and facts galore, it is a veritable history lesson. Despite the title, it is not an anti-French manifesto, far from it. As well as plenty of passage highlighting reasons to love the French, it reminds us of the many things the world has to thank France for. That said, it also takes time to debunk some myths that the French love to trot out. The fact that le croissant was a Belgian invention is particularly irksome to my French friends. The text is as tongue in cheek as you would expect and there are giggles aplenty. The first big laugh I had was when Clarke described William II (informally known as Rufus) of England as "a medieval Paris Hilton" for his indulgences and a love of "make up, dresses and yappy little dogs".So how did it happen that de Gaulle received Churchill's support? Well, he didn't. Not from Churchill himself. «But the British Cabinet, headed by Attlee and Eden, urged Churchill not to withdraw support from de Gaulle. The ministers said such a radical policy change was dangerous and cast doubt on some of the unfavorable reports about de Gaulle. ... The War Cabinet had the final word, and Churchill agreed to Britain’s continued championing of de Gaulle.» 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. So I decided to delve into that past and come up with a more accurate answer. We Brits feel no resentment about 'losing' our American colonies. We're quite fond of independent Americans, and see them as distant cousins who can't spell our language properly. We've cooperated with America pretty amicably on projects like liberating Europe and inventing pop music. And we have no desire whatsoever to try and govern Texas.” You learn a lot about the impact of France on the world. In many cases, as the book has a clear anti-French bias (albeit tongue-in-cheek apparently) Clarke takes pains to point out where our common understanding of the influence of France on history is misplaced. As tongue in cheek as the title sounds, this is an informative history book that charts 1000 years of Anglo-French mutual adoration loathing. Stephen Clarke leaves no stone unturned as he charts events surrounding the momentous events from history involving the two countries.

1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke - Goodreads 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke - Goodreads

It’s clear the author spent a lot of time researching all the facts, and this is very much appreciated. There are of course a lot of wars covered here, as is always the case with history books. Where the important people go to war, while all the other people die in them. I did learn quite a few interesting things along the way though. Like what the real Richard the Lionheart and his brother John were like, not just how they are depicted in the countless Robin Hood adaptations. Or how British propaganda is responsible for Napoleon’s false reputation. And I learned some fascinating things about the colonization of America. Like the many, many, many embarrassing mistakes that were made. And how problematic it was for everyone involved. After all those "Merde" (Paul West) novels in which Stephen Clarke showed a deep knowledge of the French psyche, but also of all those national clichés, I was expecting a little more from this jocular history of the mutual dislike between the two neighboring nations. However, I found the first half of the book far more interesting than the second half. Maybe it was because that was where my interest lay more in the earlier periods of history but I found the last part of the book with De Gaulle fairly uninteresting, though I didn't know about any of it really.This is a very French trait. Today, if a big manufacturing company is in trouble, it will parachute in a graduate of one of France’s grandes écoles, someone who has studied business theory and maths for ten years but never actually been inside a factory. The important thing to the French is not experience, it is leadership – or, more exactly, French-style leadership, which mainly involves ignoring advice from anyone with lots of experience but no French grande école on their CV.” So from that point of view it gives great pleasure to hit the French with la baguette de l'histoire. Clarke's witty writing helps a lot. But it is not thoughtless bashing, Clarke's book actually hits upon an interesting topic: the way national identities are constructed and how historical events are greatly distorted in that process. We and the other. You could easily write a book about every country in Europe and the ridiculous deviations of history. The most interesting example in this book is obviously (to me) the story of Jeannne D'Arc. It is rather hilarious how the national memory erases the fact that the poor girl was sentenced to death by her own people for wearing trousers. Mon Dieu! If you are really interested in the historical field of national memory I would highly recommend The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm. Clarke describes a broad range of amusing encounters between the Brits and the French. Some of the examples were quite unconvincing though, in my opinion. For instance, his use of Voltaire was quite ambivalent. At first Clarke uses him as an important example for French disinterest in Canada, but later on he writes a whole chapter on Voltaire not being representative for his fellow countrymen. Which is fine, but then don’t use him as a French example in other chapters. I also was a bit troubled by the guillotine. Clarke points out that the Brits already had a similar invention called the Halifax. That may be so, but unless Guillotine used this Halifax for his own design, I don’t really see the point. Did Guillotine even know of the existence of this machine at all? Were these machines totally identical? The French, in the person of Guillotine, did invent the guillotine, because it was his prototype that was used during and after the French Revolution. That the Halifax resembled this machine is in this case not really an argument. Lastly, I found the comparison between France and some British islands during WOII idiotic. The situations differ way too much to make a sensible comparison between the two. A whole country being invaded by their ‘archenemy’ or a few islands that were given up with some shoulder shrugging, well sentiment could be a bit different, don’t you think? I could go on stating the other way that the Guernsey resistance did a terrible job on blowing up railways (do they have a railway there?) comparing to their French equivalents. There was almost no resistance on the islands, so compared to the French the islanders were a bunch of Nazi-sympathizers…right? (This is just to show how stupid you can make the argument) Another thing that should not be left unsaid is the part about colonization. Because this book shines a big bright spotlight on all the notable mistakes the French made and even some of the successes the British achieved, but tries to be as brief as possible about everything the British did wrong. It is very important to understand that you don’t get to see the whole picture here. The British part is casually mentioned in a few sentences here and there, while the French part takes up multiple long chapters. Research for The French Revolution and What Went Wrong took him deep into French archives in search of the actual words, thoughts and deeds of the revolutionaries and royalists of 1789. He has now re-emerged to ask modern Parisians why they have forgotten some of the true democratic heroes of the period, and opted to idolize certain maniacs.

1000 Years of Annoying the French - Google Books

Ten centuries' worth of French historical 'facts' bite the dust as Stephen Clarke looks at what has really been going on since 1066 ... The Great Plague is one of the most compelling events in human history, even more so now, when the notion of plague—be it animal or human—has never loomed larger as a contemporary public concern The thing is, this all just feels a bit disproportionate. I mean, like half the countries in the world right now have an independence day to celebrate their independence from the British. That’s something that I do feel could have at least been mentioned a bit more clearly, to balance things out, instead of focusing so much on what the French did wrong. Though I do appreciate that some mistakes the British made during certain conflicts are at least mentioned throughout the book. A "bummel" is a journey without end. Whether we want to or not, most of us have to settle with a return to our regular exertions. From the Norman (not French) Conquest, to XXX, it is a light-hearted - but impeccably researched - account of all out great-fallings out.of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke The Frenchmen tried to explain that sexual intercourse between males was taboo (despite anything the Brits might have told them about French sailors),” The chapters come with delightful sub-headings, such as "In India and Tahiti: France Gets Lost In Paradise: A selection of historical Frenchmen lose India, fail to notice Australia and give sexually transmitted diseases to Pacific islanders" and "How Britain Killed Off the Last French Royals: And the Victorians said, 'It was an accident, honest.' Three times." A laugh out loud hilarious and perceptive look at the history of England and France and their relationship for the past one thousand years. This is no dry history book, but a humorous recounting with lots of pithy statements and witty asides. I loved the humorous approach because it was not politically correct and because humor often allows you to get closer to the truth and reality of a thing.