Graham Robb, a prize-winning historian of France and biographer of Balzac, Victor Hugo and Rimabaud, cuts loose from desk-bound scholarship in this winningly eccentric tour through 2,000 years of French life, from Vercingetorix to the gilets jaunes via Madame Bovary and Charlie Hebdo.
Many of the book’s chapters draw on cycling trips taken with his wife over the past two decades, in search of landmarks documented in centuries gone by. A Renaissance-era mention of an elm tree planted at the country’s geographical centre supplies an excuse for a surprisingly compelling treasure hunt.
Later, he rides a bus from Paris to Versailles to compare the view with a canvas painted in the time of Louis XIV, listening en route to the chat between two girls in the seat behind him: “it was the sort of intelligently excited conversation between friends which often turns up useful information.”
