That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present

British historian Robert Tombs and French historian Isabelle Tombs document the 300-year rivalry of dynamic processes of mutual contact and influence between the British and French that began in the time of Louis XIV. The study also exemplifies how the rivalry has been expressed in caricatures, histories, literature, painting and film. The authors take us from Waterloo to Chirac’s slandering of British cooking, charting the cross-channel entanglement and its unparalleled breadth of cultural, economic and political influence. They illuminate the complexity of the relationship, rivalry, enmity, misapprehension and loathing mixed with envy, admiration and genuine affection, and the ways in which it has shaped the modern world, from North America to the Middle East to Southeast Asia, and is still shaping Europe today.