This collection examines relations between France and Britain, in particular their conflicting memories of key episodes in their recent past.

Genuinely new story of the Second World War - the full account of England's last war against France in 1940-42. Most people think that England's last war with France involved point-blank broadsides from sailing ships and breastplated Napoleonic cavalry charging red-coated British infantry. But there was a much more recent conflict than this. Under the terms of its armistice with Nazi Germany, the unoccupied part of France and its substantial colonies were ruled from the spa town of Vichy by the government of Marshal Philip Petain. Between July 1940 and November 1942, while Britain was at war with Germany, Italy and ultimately Japan, it also fought land, sea and air battles with the considerable forces at the disposal of Petain's Vichy French. When the Royal Navy sank the French Fleet at Mers El-Kebir almost 1,300 French sailors died in what was the twentieth century's most one-sided sea battle. British casualties were nil. It is a wound that has still not healed, for undoubtedly these events are better remembered in France than in Britain. An embarrassment at the time, France's maritime massacre and the bitter, hard-fought campaigns that followed rarely make more than footnotes in accounts of Allied operations against Axis forces. Until now.

The Seven Years War was a global contest between the two superpowers of eighteenth century Europe, France and Britain. Winston Churchill called it “the first World War”. Neither side could afford to lose advantage in any part of the world, and the decisive battles of the war ranged from Fort Duquesne in what is now Pittsburgh to Minorca in the Mediterranean, from Bengal to Quèbec. By its end British power in North America and India had been consolidated and the foundations of Empire laid, yet at the time both sides saw it primarily as a struggle for security, power and influence within Europe. In this eagerly awaited study, Daniel Baugh, the world’s leading authority on eighteenth century maritime history looks at the war as it unfolded from the failure of Anglo-French negotiations over the Ohio territories in 1784 through the official declaration of war in 1756 to the treaty of Paris which formally ended hostilities between England and France in 1763. At each stage he examines the processes of decision-making on each side for what they can show us about the capabilities and efficiency of the two national governments and looks at what was involved not just in the military engagements themselves but in the complexities of sustaining campaigns so far from home. With its panoramic scope and use of telling detail this definitive account will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in military history or the history of eighteenth century Europe.

The legacies service in the First World War had on women's lives and the privileges it afforded some of them.

Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power.

Germany's invasion of France in August 1914 represented a threat to the great power status of both Britain and France. The countries had no history of co-operation, yet the entente they had created in 1904 proceeded by trial and error, via recriminations, to win a war of unprecedented scale and ferocity. Elizabeth Greenhalgh examines the huge problem of finding a suitable command relationship in the field and in the two capitals. She details the civil-military relations on each side, the political and military relations between the two powers, the maritime and industrial collaboration that were indispensable to an industrialised war effort and the Allied prosecution of war on the western front. Although it was not until 1918 that many of the war-winning expedients were adopted, Dr Greenhalgh shows that victory was ultimately achieved because of, rather than in spite of, coalition.

France and Britain, indispensable allies in two world wars, remember and forget their shared history in contrasting ways. The book examines key episodes in the relationship between the two countries, including the outbreak of war in 1914, the battles of the Somme and Verdun, the Fall of France in 1940, Dunkirk, and British involvement in the French Resistance and the 1944 Liberation. The contributors discuss how the two countries tend to forget what they owe to each other, and have a distorted view of history which still colours and prejudices their relationship today, despite government efforts to build a close political and military partnership.

The author of A Year in the Merde and Talk to the Snail offers a highly biased and hilarious view of French history in this international bestseller. Things have been just a little awkward between Britain and France ever since the Norman invasion in 1066. Fortunately—after years of humorously chronicling the vast cultural gap between the two countries—author Stephen Clarke is perfectly positioned to investigate the historical origins of their occasionally hostile and perpetually entertaining pas de deux. Clarke sets the record straight, documenting how French braggarts and cheats have stolen credit rightfully due their neighbors across the Channel while blaming their own numerous gaffes and failures on those same innocent Brits for the past thousand years. Deeply researched and written with the same sly wit that made A Year in the Merde a comic hit, this lighthearted trip through the past millennium debunks the notion that the Battle of Hastings was a French victory (William the Conqueror was really a Norman who hated the French) and pooh-poohs French outrage over Britain’s murder of Joan of Arc (it was the French who executed her for wearing trousers). He also takes the air out of overblown Gallic claims, challenging the provenance of everything from champagne to the guillotine to prove that the French would be nowhere without British ingenuity. Brits and Anglophiles of every national origin will devour Clarke’s decidedly biased accounts of British triumph and French ignominy. But 1000 Years of Annoying the French will also draw chuckles from good-humored Francophiles as well as “anyone who’s ever encountered a snooty Parisian waiter or found themselves driving on the Boulevard Périphérique during August” (The Daily Mail). A bestseller in Britain, this is an entertaining look at history that fans of Sarah Vowell are sure to enjoy, from the author the San Francisco Chronicle has called “the anti-Mayle . . . acerbic, insulting, un-PC, and mostly hilarious.”