Can't live with them ...
Source: observer.guardian.co.uk. Posted on 09 April 2006.
Robert and Isabelle Tombs tell the story of the love-hate relationship between the French and the English in their sparkling history, 'That Sweet Enemy'.
Never mind a student revolt in France shaking the regime with the threat of revolutionary violence on the streets, there's an older continuity than the enemy within: the Anglo-Saxons across the water. Who can forget the centuries of conflict stretching back through a haze of attack and counterattack to the event we still call the Conquest?
In the spring of 2004, in the aftermath of a monumental bust-up over Iraq, London and Paris celebrated a century of the entente cordiale. There was a royal charm offensive (the Queen speaks good French), the Grenadier Guards paraded down the Champs Elysées, President Chirac was subjected to an orchestral arrangement of Les Misérables and, finally, someone conducted a poll.
