The History of Modern France by Jonathan Fenby & How the French Think by Sudhir Hazareesingh

History Today

‘France’, said Charles de Gaulle, ‘cannot be France without grandeur.’ The country’s recent history suggests the great man was nearer the mark when he moaned how impossible it was to manage a country ‘of 246 different kinds of cheese’. André Malraux famously observed: ‘When the French fight for mankind, they are wonderful, when they fight for themselves, they are nothing.’ November’s horrific Paris attacks by Islamic terrorists, rightly, generated much sympathy for the country. However, will France’s current President, François Hollande, be able to follow in the great traditions of France and show the world how to deal with one of the foulest scourges of our time?

Against this background, these two books could not be better timed. Jonathan Fenby knows the country well and argues that the French have become ‘prisoners of their past’. It can no longer prosper because the country that bequeathed the world exceptional ideas such as Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité has been outpaced by the rest of the world.