Customer Reviews

La Belle France

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4 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I did enjoy Alistair Horne's last book, 'Seven Ages of Paris,' so I was surprised that he, the author of so many different books, would accept a contract to write essentially the same survey again, this time with less skill, less effort, and less result. 'La Belle France' is a scrapbook of historical anecdotes about France, but Horne never tells any of them well. The master of this sort of history is Paul Johnson: his smart distillations always offer the perfect balance of hard information and compelling narrative. I finished Horne's section on the events of 1968 in Paris with no concrete idea of what happened or why. And ridiculous errors abound: the Eiffel Tower was built of wrought iron, not steel, and Lyndon Johnson bowed out of the election of 1968, not 1970. Besides bad storytelling, Horne adopts a smarmy, fake-intimate tone peculiar to best-sellers. Ugh!

This book was originally published in England under the title `Friend or Foe: an Anglo-Saxon History of France'. I reviewed it on Amazon UK when it first appeared under that title, which was thoroughly misleading, since it grossly neglects most of the aspects of French history which were connected with England. This new title does not raise the false expectations that the old one did; even so, the relationships between England and France, though they need not be anything like as central to the history of France as they should have been under the old title, should have considerably more importance than they are given here.

When, for example, we come to the reign of Louis XIV, where any book about the history of France should surely have devoted some space to the wars with England, these are dismissed in just 17 lines. The great struggle for Empire between England and France in the 18th century receives equally short shrift. Foreign policy, in fact, seems to bore the author (perhaps he thinks that it will bore his readers) and the cursory way in which it is dealt with (if at all) is the greatest shortcoming of this history.

So do read this book if you simply want a one-volume popular, lively and spicy history of France, with plenty of character sketches, anecdotes and vignettes. When we come to the 19th century, Horne draws effectively on descriptions from the great French writers to throw light on the political and social history of the time; for the 20th century he occasionally draws on his own memories and contacts. There is much about the cultural life of France in both these centuries. He indulges himself when he comes to subjects that specially interest him, principally the architectural history of his beloved Paris, (and there are long and graphic accounts of the two sieges of Paris, by Henri IV in 1589/90 and by the Prussians in 1870/71). He seems not to be very interested in `la France Profonde' which was hostile to so many of the revolutions made by Parisian radicals.

As for the new title, France is indeed beautiful; but whether that can be said also of her history - dotted as it is with the many savageries recounted here in graphic detail - is perhaps another question.

Very engaging writing style by the author. Not too much commentary, just the facts that are important to the understanding of how France has been shaped over time and its special relationship to England. The best book for first time travelers to France or those who have traveled to Europe and scratch their head wondering why there is such an "on again off again" relationship between the two countries andy why France came to the rescue of fledgling America during the American Revolution. Best of all it is in electronic form!

I wasn't expecting this to be the ultimate French history book. I wanted something that would give me a good overview and help me appreciate the numerous plaques and statues around Paris.

Sometimes I wish he spent more time on the juicy parts but then the book would be twice the size.

Disappointed again. (You'd think I'd have learned after reading Horne's The Seven Ages of Paris, but needing a good overview of French history I held my breath & bought it.) But yet again, Horne's style is too flip, breezy, more about being "clever" than enlightening. Plus I found two errors in the first 8 pages. Not that they were major but if these details are wrong, what else is wrong?

This book has all the hallmarks of dictation without review or editing. While a British writer of French history might be excused for not knowing the American election cycles (but where was the editor?), how can he write that "the eighteen year old Prince of Wales, future Edward VII," was feted in Paris in 1914. This is not a typo (VII, instead of VIII), since Horne describes the prince as the son of Victoria; Edward VIII was her great grandson.

With such flagrant errors, how can anyone rely on any of the purported facts Horne sets out?