A History of France

by John Julius Norwich

Overview

John Julius Norwich—called a “true master of narrative history” by Simon Sebag Montefiore—returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France: a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best.

Beginning with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters—Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc and Marie Antionette, to name a few—as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, always fascinating history. From the French Revolution—after which neither France, nor the world, would be the same again—to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book more.”

With his celebrated stylistic panache and expert command of detail, Norwich writes in an inviting, intimate tone, and with a palpable affection for France. One of our greatest contemporary historians has deftly crafted a comprehensive yet concise portrait of the country's historical sweep.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802147776
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	10/04/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	97,030
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH is the author of many books, including Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsessions that Forged Modern Europe; A History of Venice; Byzantium; and the New York Times bestseller Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy.

Read an Excerpt

This book is intended only for the general reader, to whom the French rather charmingly refer as l’homme moyen sensual, and is written in the belief that the average English-speaking man or woman has remarkably little knowledge of French history. We may know a bit about Napoleon or Joan of Arc or Louis XIV, but for most of us that’s about it. In my own three schools we were taught only about the battles we won: Crécy and Poitiers, Agincourt and Waterloo.

So here is my attempt to fill in the blanks . . . I want to talk about the wonderful Madame de Pompadour and the odious Madame de Maintenon; about Louis-Philippe, almost forgotten today but probably the best king France ever had; and that’s just for a start. Chapter I covers the ground pretty fast, taking us from the Gauls and Julius Caesar to Charlemagne, about eight centuries. But as we continue the pace inevitably slackens. Chapter 21 deals only with the five years of the Second World War. And with that we stop. All history books must have a clearly defined stopping place.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Maps xv

1 Very Dark Indeed: 58 BC-843 1

2 Their Own Destruction Sure: 843-1151 15

3 The Gift of Excalibur. 1151-1223 32

4 The Fatal Tower: 1223-1326 50

5 A Captured King: 1326-80 64

6 A Foregone Conclusion: 1380-1453 82

7 The Universal Spider: 1453-83 96

8 A Warm, Sunlit Land: 1483-1515 106

9 With His Usual Flourish: 1515-47 118

10 'Well worth a Mass': 1547-1643 137

11 'L'Etat c'est moi': 1643-1715 157

12 The Writing on the Wall: 1715-89 175

13 'I am indeed your king': 1789-93 192

14 'Pas de faiblesse!': 1793-5 212

15 A Blessing or a Curse?: 1795-1815 228

16 The Perfect Compromise: 1815-48 248

17 'A symbol of national glory': 1848-52 270

18 A Sphinx Without a Riddle: 1852-70 281

19 The Last Manifestation: 1870-3 306

20 'J' accuse!': 1873-1935 319

21 The Cross of Lorraine: 1935-45 338

Epilogue 359

Acknowledgements and Illustration Credits 363

Suggestions for Further Reading 365

Index 367

Editorial Reviews

Praise for A History of France

An Amazon Best Book of the Month

“[Norwich] remembered that there was a public composed of people who read books of history for pleasure, not from duty . . . [A History of France is] a delightful book—engaging, enthusiastic, sympathetic, funny and sometimes, one has to add, quirky.”—Wall Street Journal

“The major achievement of this book is the very fact that Norwich takes each of the four rulers to be a piece of the same story . . . written with often humming literary verve.”—New York Times Book Review

“With characteristic deftness of touch, Norwich brings each character vividly to life and skillfully weaves their stories together . . . a genuinely inspired idea for a book, and Norwich executes it with typical aplomb.”―Tracy Borman, BBC History Magazine

“Norwich’s long career as a historian has given him a definite assurance of style, which allows him to present historical detail in a thoroughly engaging manner without sacrificing clarity.”―Library Journal

“A streamlined, merry romp through glorious Gaul.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Norwich’s strength is the colorful anecdote . . . [and A History of France is] informative and entertaining.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

08/27/2018
An author of many popular books on history (Four Princes: A History of Venice) and the son of a British ambassador to France, the late Norwich offers a brief overview of the country’s political and military history from Roman times through 1945, with much on kings (and later prime ministers and presidents), political intrigue, mistresses, and battles. Norwich’s strength is the colorful anecdote, such as when he reveals that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, French generals, having good maps of the German side of the border but not of their own, “had considerable difficulty in finding the units they were supposed to command,” or describes the antics of Paul Déschanel, who governed for seven months in 1920 while suffering from mental illness and once left mid-meeting to jump into a lake. Norwich gallops through decades and sometimes even centuries of history with extreme speed: the initial 14-page chapter covers 900 years; in a single sentence he dispenses with the greatest health catastrophe in the country’s history, the Black Death. And he devotes about the same modest amount of space to the deaths of Emperor Louis Napoleon and his son during the 1870s as to the far more consequential Dreyfus Affair two decades later. While often informative and entertaining, this isn’t a deep dive. Agent: Felicity Bryan, Felicity Bryan Assoc. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Writer-narrator John Norwich brings a personal touch and a lifetime of experience to this breezy popular history of France from Roman times to the end of WWII. His voice, while aged, is pleasing and listenable. His narration is effortlessly clear, expressive, and well paced. His general manner is that of a cultured man of intelligence and learning who is indulging himself in a project close to his heart. Quotations, however, sound different from his narrative voice and tone—as if read by someone else or at another time—which is a bit distracting. While the audiobook is not scholarly, it is informative as well as enjoyable. As Norwich notes, it was written and read with love, a love of France that comes through to the listener. W.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2019 - AudioFile

2018-07-31

An eminent British historian weaves a vivid tapestry of France's past.

Capping a prolific writing and broadcasting career, Norwich (Four Princes: Henry VIII, Francis I, Charles V, Suleiman the Magnificent and the Obsession that Forged Modern Europe, 2016, etc.) deftly distills the history of France from the Gauls to de Gaulle. He gallops through the first 1,500 years of his story, peopled, he writes, with few "particularly colourful characters" though many devastating conflicts, particularly the Hundred Years' War, protracted by the reign of a "hopelessly insane" king, Charles VI. The author dispatches in a mere three pages the intrepid advent and fiery end of Joan of Arc. Finally, arriving at 1515, Norwich finds a character "to make the heart beat faster": the remarkable Francis I, who, Norwich exclaims, "hit France like a rocket." He counts Francis I, a lover of books, the arts, and, not least, women, and Louis XIV, the Sun King, who reigned from 1643 to 1715, as France's "two most dazzling rulers," indelibly stamping the nation's culture and identity. Before, after, and between them, however, were greedy, inept, ill-advised, and clumsy rulers whose escapades, travails, marriages—and many, many mistresses—Norwich chronicles with verve and wit. After Francis I, the nation roiled with religious wars between Catholics and Huguenots, which ended, after nearly half a century, in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. It was not the end of France's involvement in wars, however. There was the Thirty Years' War, "the deadliest and most brutal upheaval the continent had ever seen," beginning in 1618; the Seven Years' War, lasting from 1756 to 1763; the Revolution and commune at the end of the 18th century; Napoleon's extraordinary military campaigns; and two world wars. The author ascribes his love of France to childhood travels there with his mother, Lady Diana Cooper, and living in France when his father, Duff Cooper, was ambassador in the 1940s. This book, he writes, is "a sort of thank-offering to France."

An engaging political history and affectionate homage.

Kirkus Reviews