A History of France

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In this book, now available in paperback, he examines the history of France from the rise of the Capetians in the mid-tenth century to the execution of Joan of Arc in the mid-fifteenth. When Louis XVI was woken with news of the storming of the Bastille he sleepily asked: "Is it a Rebellion?

The tragedy of the Occupation is dealt with from the heart, as Norwich was often a witness, after the war, to the presentation by his father of the King's Medal for Courage to members of the Resistance - the few who survived. A great historian explains how Napoleon forged a dictatorship and explores the dilemmas of collaboration, personal and political. The second Viscount Norwich or the late John Julius Cooper if you prefer, wrote and finished his final book, not long before he died.Paxton demonstrated that Petain's regime actions went beyond what they were pressured to do by the Nazis. From the French Revolution—after which neither France, nor the world, would be the same again—to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book more. This is an excellent way to teach the facts, especially if you are about to visit France for the first time, without being preached at. A fascinating quadruple biography of four of the greatest monarchs of the Renaissance by this true master of narrative history. If there is any kind of conclusion here it is that, as Fenby puts it, France is a prisoner, trapped under the weight of its history.

It is to be read as a general history (he does skip over great chunks with mere paragraphs) but that is his intent - to encapsulate this history of France "from Gaul to de Gaulle" in a mere 400 pages. Knecht concentrates on the high politics, but his book is a valuable linkage of the Middle Ages and the early-modern age, taking readers from the Hundred Years’ War to the French Wars of Religion. A bold new assessment of how the violence, racist nationalism, and grief aroused in 1914-18 changed the course of historyTo many, the years of the Great War seemed to signal Europe's collective suicide. Beginning with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters—Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc and Marie Antionette, to name a few—as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, always fascinating history. Why travel with a guide book on dry history, architecture, or politics when you can sink your teeth into such a delicious feast?

Hazareesingh makes no reference, however, to the whole situationist movement that Debord founded, which, from punk rock to Factory Records to Will Self to the Occupy movement, has had an extraordinary impact on Anglo-American culture.