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? FRIEND OR FOE takes a chronological approach.

Author Biography

Educated Le Rosey, Switzerland and Jesus College, Cambridge. WWII included attachment in MI5. Foreign corr, Daily Telegraph 1952-5. Founded the Alistair Horne research fellowship in modern history, St Antony's, Oxford 1969. Prizes include Hawthornden (for The Price of Glory) and Wolfson (for A Savage War of Peace). He was knighted in 2003 (Queen's birthday honours) for services to Franco-British relations.