That Sweet Enemy: The British and the French From the Sun King to the Present
Robert Tombs, Isabelle TombsThat Sweet Enemy brings both British wit (Robert Tombs is a British historian) & French panache (Isabelle Tombs is a French historian) to bear on three centuries of the history of Britain & France. In the nearly two centuries since the final defeat of Napoleon, France & Britain have spent much of that time as allies - an alliance that has been almost as uneasy, as competitive & as ambivalent as the generations of warfare. From Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, the authors chart this cross-channel entanglement & the unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic, & political influence it has wrought on both sides, illuminating the complex & sometimes contradictory aspects of this relationship—rivalry, enmity, & misapprehension mixed with envy, admiration, & genuine affection—& the myriad ways it has shaped the modern world.
Written with wit & elegance, & illustrated with delightful images & cartoons from both sides of the Channel, That Sweet Enemy is a unique & immensely enjoyable history, destined to become a classic. It's a book which brings both British humour & Gallic panache to the story of these two countries, in sickness & in health, for richer for poorer, in victory & in defeat, in dominance & in decline.
Robert Tombs was born in England, studied at Cambridge & conducted doctoral research on modern French history in France, where he was connected to the Université de Paris IV (Sorbonne). Isabelle Tombs was born in France, studied at the Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) & received a Ph.D in modern British history at Trinity College, Cambridge. Presently, Isabelle teaches French to British diplomats at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London. Robert teaches history at Cambridge University, where he is a Fellow of St John’s College. They share dual nationality & live in Cambridge, England.