The History of Modern France: From the Revolution to the Present Day. By Jonathan Fenby. Simon and Schuster; 536 pages; £25.
FRANCE breathes its history, and engraves the past on its landscape. No French town is complete without an Avenue Charles de Gaulle. The boulevards and train stations of Paris—the Gare d’Austerlitz, Avenue de la Grande Armée—recall great battles waged and won. In speeches modern politicians draw on France’s past glories in a way that British leaders, say, might feel was an uncomfortable expression of national vanity. So it is always useful to take a fresh look at how history shapes the country’s politics today.
Jonathan Fenby, The Economist’s correspondent in Paris in the early 1980s, is a veteran and affectionate observer of France, and a biographer of de Gaulle. In his latest book, he takes the long view, recounting the country’s modern history, starting in 1789 and ending with the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks of January this year. The bulk of the book is a well-told narrative account, and so valuable primarily as a text of...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1KmCXWJ
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