Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

The entertaining biography of Edward VII and his playboy lifestyle, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde

Despite fierce opposition from his mother, Queen Victoria, Edward VII was always passionately in love with France. He had affairs with the most famous Parisian actresses, courtesans and can-can dancers. He spoke French more elegantly than English. He was the first ever guest to climb the Eiffel Tower with Gustave Eiffel, in defiance of an official English ban on his visit. He turned his French seduction skills into the diplomatic prowess that sealed the Entente Cordiale. A quintessentially English king? Pas du tout! Stephen Clarke argues that as "Dirty Bertie," Edward learned all the essentials in life from the French.

1119015493
Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

The entertaining biography of Edward VII and his playboy lifestyle, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde

Despite fierce opposition from his mother, Queen Victoria, Edward VII was always passionately in love with France. He had affairs with the most famous Parisian actresses, courtesans and can-can dancers. He spoke French more elegantly than English. He was the first ever guest to climb the Eiffel Tower with Gustave Eiffel, in defiance of an official English ban on his visit. He turned his French seduction skills into the diplomatic prowess that sealed the Entente Cordiale. A quintessentially English king? Pas du tout! Stephen Clarke argues that as "Dirty Bertie," Edward learned all the essentials in life from the French.

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Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

by Stephen Clarke
Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

Dirty Bertie: An English King Made in France

by Stephen Clarke

Paperback

$13.95 
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Overview

The entertaining biography of Edward VII and his playboy lifestyle, by Stephen Clarke, author of 1000 Years of Annoying the French and A Year in the Merde

Despite fierce opposition from his mother, Queen Victoria, Edward VII was always passionately in love with France. He had affairs with the most famous Parisian actresses, courtesans and can-can dancers. He spoke French more elegantly than English. He was the first ever guest to climb the Eiffel Tower with Gustave Eiffel, in defiance of an official English ban on his visit. He turned his French seduction skills into the diplomatic prowess that sealed the Entente Cordiale. A quintessentially English king? Pas du tout! Stephen Clarke argues that as "Dirty Bertie," Edward learned all the essentials in life from the French.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780099574330
Publisher: Random House UK
Publication date: 07/01/2015
Pages: 400
Product dimensions: 4.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Stephen Clarke lives in France, where he divides his time between writing and not writing. His first novel, A Year in the Merde, originally became a word of mouth hit in Paris in 2004, and is now published all over the world. Since then he has published four more Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail, an indispensable guide to understanding the French, and 1000 Years of Annoying the French, in which he investigates what has really been going on since 1066.

Table of Contents

Map of Bertie's Paris vi

Preface xi

Chapter 1 1855: Amour at First Sight 1

Chapter 2 The Royal Cherry Is Unroyally Popped 38

Chapter 3 Bertie and the 'Palace Dames' 54

Chapter 4 An Anglo-Danish Wedding and a French Marriage 74

Chapter 5 Sex and the City of Light 95

Chapter 6 Painting the Town Rouge 125

Chapter 7 If You Can't Be with the One You Love… 158

Chapter 8 Savaged by the Press 180

Chapter 9 The French Try to be English 202

Chapter 10 Bertie Makes an Exhibition of Himself… Again 217

Chapter 11 The French Make Work for Idle Hands 238

Chapter 12 We All Like to Be Beside the Seaside 267

Chapter 13 Reaching an Anglo-French Entente 287

Chapter 14 Don't Mention the War 318

Chapter 15 C'est la Fin 335

Afterword: Life After Bertie 361

Select Bibliography 364

Picture permissions 367

Index 368

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