Editorial Content for France: An Adventure History
Contributors
Reviewer (text)
FRANCE is an entertaining, though demanding, history of France, from the first-century BC to the present day. It is based on author Graham Robb’s 30 years of exploring the country as an intrepid bicyclist and researcher.
Especially in the early chapters, readers will want to refer to both the maps at the back of the book and a contemporary map in order to understand where the various invaders and tribes were positioned. There are also “Notes for Travellers” for those who want to retrace Robb’s steps.
"Part travelogue and part essay, this is a lively and thought-provoking homage to the complex and inimitable country that is France."
While each chapter is a self-contained story, within those chapters the narrative moves between Robb and his wife Margaret’s adventures and those that took place hundreds of years earlier. His observations about France are fascinating. He talks about why the southeast is more violent than other parts of the country; how anti-clericalism existed long before, and after, the Revolution; and why the country’s obsession with Paris’s predominance from the 12th century to the present was in part the result of how much writing about France --- literary, historiographical, legal --- emanated from the City of Light. He uses the journal of 18th-century Paris-born wanderer Jacques-Louis Ménétra to illustrate his point.
Robb is not afraid to weigh in on contemporary issues such as climate change and rampant development, as well as politics. In his chapter on Napoleon, he notes: “He was the man whose patriotism was served by wiliness and steely charm combined with ruthless determination --- which is why the epithet napoléonien is applied to Presidents Mitterrand, Sarkozy and Macron rather than to General de Gaulle.”
Robb is an obsessive researcher. In discussing the Cathars, he describes maps that feature a particular tree, then shows all the guidebooks and maps from the 16th century on featuring that tree. While readers will find the usual faces, events and themes of French history --- Louis XIV, the French Revolution, the Vichy regime and La Résistance, the Tour de France --- many new events, locales and individuals are explored as well.
Part travelogue and part essay, this is a lively and thought-provoking homage to the complex and inimitable country that is France.
Teaser
Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, FRANCE takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Robb’s own adventures and discoveries while living, working and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French Revolution.
Promo
Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, FRANCE takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Robb’s own adventures and discoveries while living, working and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French Revolution.
About the Book
A wholly original history of France, filled with a lifetime’s knowledge and passion --- by the author of the New York Times bestseller PARISIANS.
Beginning with the Roman army’s first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending in the era of Emmanuel Macron, FRANCE takes readers on an endlessly entertaining journey through French history. Frequently hilarious and always surprising, Graham Robb’s FRANCE combines the stylistic versatility of a novelist with the deep understanding of a scholar.
Robb’s own adventures and discoveries while living, working and traveling in France connect this tour through space and time with on-the-ground experience. There are scenes of wars and revolutions from the plains of Provence to the slums and boulevards of Paris. Robb conveys with wit and precision what it felt like to look over the shoulder of a young Louis XIV as he planned the vast garden of Versailles, and the dangerous thrill of having a ringside seat at the French revolution. Some of the protagonists may be familiar, but appear here in a very different light --- Caesar, Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte, General Charles de Gaulle.
This extraordinary narrative is the fruit of decades of research and 30,000 miles on a self-propelled, two-wheeled time machine (a bicycle). Even seasoned Francophiles will wonder if they really know that terra incognita on the edge of Europe that is currently referred to as “France.”
Audiobook available, read by Tom Lawrence
