For a great read, I would make one critique: I would have liked to have read a bit more about French cultural history. Packed full of discoveries' - The Sunday Times'A gorgeous tapestry of insights, stories and surprises' - Fintan O'Toole'A rich and vibrant narrative . Robb’s reminiscing his own adventures allows the reader some connection to the ancient histories he’s discussing. In this new study of key moments in Venice's history, from its half-legendary founding amid the collapse of the Roman empire to its modern survival as a fragile city of the arts menaced by saturation tourism and rising sea levels, Jonathan Keates shows us just how much this remarkable place has contributed to world culture and explains how it endures as an object of desire and inspiration for so many. Even with the helpful maps and a massive list of notes and references (which constitute nearly one-third of the hefty book), readers might appreciate the stories more if they have a ready understanding of French history, geography, and language.

The chapters on Napoleon III, the Resistance during the Second World War and the final chapter were especially absorbing. Part travelogue and part essay, this is a lively and thought-provoking homage to the complex and inimitable country that is France. There is the memoir of the English girl who became an actual friend of Napoleon Bonaparte’s during his final captivity on St.

Frequently hilarious, always surprising, this is a sweeping panorama, teeming with characters, stories and coincidences, and offering a thrilling sense of discovery and enlightenment.

It is fun and filled with interesting information and may even make you smile or be inspired to take a bike ride. From pre Roman Gaul to the present day challenges, tensions and inconsistencies of French society, the journey takes you through the lesser known and often amusing aspects of French history. He doesn’t say this, but his ride that day would have taken him by the Chateau de Joux, formerly a fortress which imprisoned the self-surrendered revolutionary leader of Haiti, Toussaint Louverture, until his death. Going through the timeline and looking stuff up on Wikipedia was probably the most entertaining part for me. Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to review a temporary digital ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.And even within each chapter, its hodgepodge approach to things French (not limited to French words, names, and god forbid, the arcane French slang), just leaves an innocent reader such as myself, simply bewildered. Of France’s recent history of disiputes between the left and right, of violence against immigrants, and often flaring general populist grievances against the governments, Robb tries to put them in an historical context of France’s turbulent history. He uses the journal of 18th-century Paris-born wanderer Jacques-Louis Ménétra to illustrate his point. Graham Robb and his wife cycle all over modern France, finding traces of past history, adventures had by people who may now be more myth than reality to us.

He darkly concludes by pointing out that in the future , French history will be distorted by myths, and that the historian “will have no choice but to set off on the darkening roads that stretch out before and behind us in the here and now. Beginning with the Roman army's first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending with the Gilets Jaunes protests in the era of Emmanuel Macron, each chapter is an adventure in its own right. Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending with the gilet jaunes protests in the era of Emmanuel Macron, each chapter is an adventure in its own right. The author discusses the Cathers, describes maps featuring a particular tree, then follows a 1552 guidebook by Charles Estienne. Some of the places and history are well know while others opens the door to obscure but very interesting footnotes of history.There are published atlases and travelogues of old, from different eras: one from 1552 is still concerned with pilgrim pathways and brigands; another from the 18th-century — on the cusp of revolution — is a literate glazier’s itinerary as much concerned with amorous conquests as the repair of stained-glass windows. This is a fairly ambitious book, covering a huge amount of time in an attempt to give an impression of the whole history of France as a nation. The different “empires”, the truth of Napoleon, the story of his son and his bizarre nephew Louis Napoleon III, the absurd decline of the Tour de France but also the shockingly prejudiced, xenophobic, anti semitic, woefully arrogant and utterly incompetent leaders across the centuries… it certainly is a fascinating and perplexing country in equal measure. FRANCE is an entertaining, though demanding, history of France, from the first-century BC to the present day.

The first stretches from ancient Gaul to the Renaissance; next, the second chronicles the time from Louis XIV to the Second Empire; and finally, part three covers the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics.This is a profoundly original and entertaining history of France, from the first century bc to the present day, based on countless new discoveries and thirty years of exploring France on foot, by bicycle and in the library. Graham Robb does not offer a standard dry list of facts and dates, but instead a panorama of France, teeming with characters, full of stories, journeys and coincidences, giving readers a thrilling sense of discovery and enlightenment. I thought one of the most interesting stories was that of Louis Napoleon III, Bonaparte’s nephew, who took power in l848 and ruled until the defeat of the French in the Franco-German war of l870.