This is done on purpose, the humoristic tone is added to make the story a bit less dry and more entertaining.

:: Stephen Clarke :: Book 1000 Years of Annoying the French

Coming after the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon by the Vichy Régime, it was the last blow to a fleet that, whatever the Brits might think of it, was in 1939 the fourth in the world after Britain, the United States and Japan; also, as the Naval Encyclopedia admits, it "had been saved from the budgetary misconceptions of aviation or the erroneous tactics of the Army"! After working as a journalist for a French press group for ten years, Paris-based Clarke now has a regular spot on French cable TV, poking fun at French culture.Essentially, a two-century-old defeat is brandished in the face of every French visitor to Britain’s diplomatic headquarters … in France’s own capital city. But there’s only a handful of sentences mentioning that the British were there to fill their pockets too. His non-fiction books include Talk to the Snail, an insider's guide to understanding the French; How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did), an amused look at France's continuing obsession with Napoleon; Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France, a biography of Edward VII; and 1000 Years of Annoying the French, which was a number one bestseller in Britain. Beginning with William the Conqueror (not French) and ending with Nicolas Sarkozy (French), Clarke covers a fair bit of ground including food, battles, trade, battles, Canada, battles, wine, battles, Voltaire, battles, the French Revolution and battles. It delves into the history between the British and French and why they have been at each others throats for years.

An end to cordiality | The Spectator An end to cordiality | The Spectator

Many things traditionally thought of as French, such as the guillotine, champagne and William of Normandy, were not French. In another memorandum to Eden, Churchill includes intelligence information that he said described de Gaulle as "thoroughly unfriendly both to Britain and to the United States and that while affecting communist sympathies he had fascist tendencies. Forgetting the existence of Celts, African-Americans and many other branches of the Anglophone world, the French will blame ‘les Anglo-Saxons’ for whatever is irking them. During World War II, the British hated their French allies almost as much as they hated their Soviet allies.

I ask my colleagues to consider urgently whether we should not now eliminate de Gaulle as a political force. Just as the battle between the sexes will never end (we hope), neither will the millennium-old rivalry between the French and anyone who happens to be born speaking English. Having read Stephen Clarke's 'A Year In The Merde' before this, my experience of reading this one was a quite welcome and pleasant subversion of my expectations - and I do have a penchant for the latter as well.

1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke - Goodreads 1000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke - Goodreads

The 'corrections' to the French interpretation of events were often amusing and enlightening, but I began to wonder how biased the 'factual' corrections were. But documents released Tuesday reveal just how deep their antipathy ran with Britain’s prime minister at one point musing about eliminating the French general as a political force. Why do only 1 per cent of those who study law succeed in joining this mysteriously opaque profession? O, delikatnie rzecz ujmując, skomplikowanych stosunkach pomiędzy dwoma wielkimi narodami, z humorem (często wyjątkowo czarnym! Harold didn’t need to hire expensive lawyers to dream up a credible defence, though – what hostage is going to refuse to take an oath to a man who is holding him hostage?

It's to be hoped he's written a similar book from a French perspective, given that he now lives and works in Paris!

1000 Years of Annoying the French - Google Books 1000 Years of Annoying the French - Google Books

Despite it being a whimsical ride for the most part, it did drag from time to time, and I was glad to get it over with.And that our past is studded with wonderful stories of betrayal, distrust, violence and all-too-rare attempts to be nice to each other. Malcolm Fisher inherits a magic ring from a dying badger and becomes the much-disputed Ruler of the World. The love is easy to explain – despite what we might say in public, we find each other irresistibly sexy.