The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

It's easy to reduce France to the sum of its parts: weekend breaks amid the culture of Paris or summer holidays basking in the sunshine of the south; accounts of the Revolution - Madame Defarge knitting beside the guillotine - and Napoleon's battle at Waterloo (mis)remembered from school history lessons; a country famous for its intellectuals, its philosophers and writers, its fashion, food and wine. Despite this, however, the notion of 'the French' as one nation is relatively recent and - historically speaking - quite misleading; in order to discover the 'real' past of France, it's not only necessary to go back in time, but also to go at a slower pace than modern life generally allows: this book is the result of 14,000 miles covered by bicycle (and four years spent in the library). It is at last a book which tells the whole story. 'Funny, enterprisingly researched, and undertaken with few apparent preconceptions ...This is an excellent, amusing, decent book, which covers an enormous amount of ground in a little space' - Philp Hensher, "Spectator". 'A fascinating study of a complex subject, written with humanity, sceptical intelligence and an impressive command of the sources' - "Daily Telegraph". 'A fascinating mix of personal testimony and judiciously filleted history' - "The Times".

Graham Robb was born in Manchester in 1958 and is a former fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He has published widely on French literature and history. His 2007 book The Discovery of France won both the Duff Cooper and Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prizes. For Parisians the City of Paris awarded him the Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris. He lives on the English-Scottish border.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780330427609
ISBN 10	0330427601
Title	The Discovery of France
Author	Graham Robb
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Pan Macmillan
Year published	2007-09-07
Number of pages	400
Prizes	Winner of Duff Cooper Prize 2008 (UK), Long-listed for BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize 2008 (UK)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable