La Belle France: A Short History

by Alistair Horne

La Belle France is a sweeping, grand narrative written with all the verve, erudition and vividness that are the hallmarks of the acclaimed British historian Alistair Horne. It recounts the hugely absorbing story of the country that has contributed to the world so much talent, style and political innovation.

Beginning with Julius Caesar’s division of Gaul into three parts, Horne leads us—in quick, illuminating vignettes—through the from Charlemagne, Philippe-Auguste and the Sun King, Louis XIV, to Cardinal Richelieu and Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac. He shows us a country that has suffered and survived seemingly endless the Hundred Years’ War, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian War, World Wars I and II and colonial battles in Indochina and Algeria. He gives us luminous portraits of the nation’s great leaders, but he is as thorough and compelling in his discussions of the lives of the peasants, the haute bourgeoisie, the sansculottes of the Revolution and the great philosophers and writers, artists and composers—Montaigne, Voltaire, Balzac, Renoir, Bizet, Monet, Proust, Satie and Sartre, among them—who have helped shape Western thought and culture.

This is a captivating, beautifully illustrated and comprehensive yet concise history of France.

Genres: History, France, Nonfiction, European History, Historical, British Literature, Reference

512 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Sir Alistair Allan Horne was an English journalist, biographer and historian of Europe, especially of 19th and 20th century France. He wrote more than 20 books on travel, history, and biography. He won the following awards: Hawthornden Prize, 1963, for The Price of Glory; Yorkshire Post Book of the Year Prize and Wolfson Literary Award, both 1978, both for A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962; French Légion d'Honneur, 1993, for work on French history;and Commander of the British Empire (CBE), 2003.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An overview of French history in very readable prose. You will no doubt find a period you'd like to explore more deeply, but for a starter or a refresher course, this is a decent beginning.

[Kelly Renee · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I liked this book but I didn't love it. I was really glad to finally find an English summary on France's history as I am very intrigued by it and being able to read something concise and in English goes a long way in making this accessible to someone like myself, who is interested in history but not passionate enough to have either the habit of reading history books frequently, or a very detailed base knowledge of a large range of historical events in different countries/periods etc.

I do think the writing of and size of the book are, as I previously stated, accessible. And I understand that for the sake of length in a book that's meant to cover France from beginnings to present, not everything can be discussed. But at the same time I did feel that some topics were brushed over way too quickly--One short paragraph on D-day? One vague sentence about Rwanda?

I also did feel as if the book would be more enjoyable for someone who already has a decent background knowledge of many of the major events being discussed because at times, someone like myself, felt a little lost because explanations couldn't be as thorough as I personally needed. I feel like this is a direct contradiction of what I said earlier but I want to reiterate that I still liked and learned a lot from the book. There were just some moments I found myself feeling a bit more lost than I wanted to feel, of course. But it inspires me to do more of my own research!

Something I really loved about this book was its commitment to providing information not just about important historical events and people but also how these people and events shaped architecture in Paris. I found these sections really fascinating, certainly more so because I know Paris very well and am marveling at all the times I've been to x place and not known that x person created it for x purpose and that x event happened there etc.

On the contrary, province seemed to be very rarely discussed which is disappointing but arguably the majority of major events were happening in/to Paris or were more easily illuminated by discussing Paris. I'm just curious about this because I know the author has previously written an entire book on history in Paris specifically so I wonder at the differences.

One more thing that didn't deduct a star but just really bothered me. The author kept referring to Jean Paul Sarthe and "his mistress Simone de Beauvoir". Or "his consort Simone de Beauvoir". Excuse me but Simone de Beauvoir was a talented and influential writer in her own right and I found the fact that she was consistently characterized by her relationship to Sarthe three times as if her name isn't powerful enough to stand on its own was absurd. It's not like she played a massive role in sparking second wave feminism or anything... oh wait.

Anyways, despite my critiques, I'm truly glad to have read the book. I enjoyed it, I learned from it. I laughed, I teared up, and I was compelled to underline many, many parts and even take notes for fun. So I would recommend :)

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introductory history of France for someone who is more interested in getting names and dates rather any analysis. Despite Horne being an arch-Francophile, he pulls no punches in detailing the mess that France has been, though he tends to gush over French bureaucrats, artists and politicians with lavish use of adjectives such as "brilliant" and "outstanding." (Sorry, Jerry Lewis is not mentioned.)

As several reviewers have noted, the initial history is quite thin, but then again so is the historical record from that period. However, to give the period of Pompidou to Mitterand 24 pages compared to 32 for Napoleon gives you an idea of the comparative unbalance of the book. As Horne has been a great observer of France during his life, one might uncharitably think that he found it much easier to write what he personally experienced than to actually research what transpired before his time.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title of this book explains it all. Despite being over 400 pages, this is a short history of France from the Roman Empire to 1996. Horne does not dwell a great length on any specific part of French history. Some kings were only described in one paragraph!

I had studied French for eight years. I've been to France twice, but I knew very little about French history other than Louis XIV, the French Revolution, and Charles de Gaulle, etc. I liked how Horne included the cultural history. Art, drama, literature, and architecture were not just mentioned but also explained their historical significance.

It took some time to read this book, but I enjoyed it very much. I felt I learned a lot about the history of France.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Filled with the extremely aggravating historian's tendency to assume that everyone reading the book already knows everything about the subject and will therefore understand subtle allusions or references to people or events which haven't been explained.

In several places where I happen to know quite a bit of the background, Horne asserts as Objective Truth something which is actually highly contested in the literature, which makes me doubt the veracity of everything else here a bit.

Embarrassingly, he refers to Simone de Beauvoir several times as 'Sartre's mistress,' which...yeah.

In spite of all that, it's a good read. Especially when it gets to post-1870 developments where the historical record is far more comprehensive and where my personal knowledge wass lighter.

[Ellis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for my class: Paris and the Art of Urban Life

A basic overview of the history of France by a guy who I'm sure loves to hear himself speak. His use of flowery language seems strange for a history book. At times, it was a nice read, but a lot of the time, it was tiresome and I would have rather read simple history. The most aggravating part of the book was that he is a historian who frequently used the wrong form of the word capital/capitol. Quick lesson: capital refers to the head. So, you use capital when refering to capital punishment or the top of a column. Capitol refers to a city. You would think that an historian, or at least his editors, would catch that!

[TFN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh... the text has its moments, mostly of subtle, somewhat academic humor.

Horne jumps across the course of French history in very broad strokes, often glossing over surprising moments or figures. His telling is generally infused with wit, yet Horne manages to create a tone both stiff and gossiping all at once, preferring to divulge the more sensational interpretations and portrayals in ways that are, at the very least, outdated and mildly sexist. Also, one needs a decent foundation in Western European history to follow his waggish pen; this is not a helpful text for those seeking an introduction to France as a serious student.

[M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book.
From pluses:
It actually goes from very beginnings to the end of 20th century in history of France, and it does at least mentiones all the important events. There are also a lot of additional super interesting info about some details. It is quite well written and if you are even a bit interested in subject, it is simply a nice read. For me, it let me fill some wholes in the knowledge, and it made me want to go from this book, which is generic and not precise, to others focused on particular bits of hisotry that I want to know better.

BUT:
1. I don't think it is possible to read the book withiout actually knowing the general history of France - there are non stop mentioned people or events without actual context nor the summary (or the profiles in case of people), and this is incredibly annoying and frankly contradicts with the basic idea of the book, which should be informative in the first place.
2. Historical mistakes! Will the book make your knowledge corrupted and false? No. BUT, not being a history expert at all myself, I did find at least couple inaccuracies or simply false information. And while the fact that e.g. Abelard and Heloise story in the book ends with some information missing and some being not true will neither is that important, nor makes that much of a difference, I really think that in the history book facts and dates should be double-checked and simply BE ACCURATE.
3. The French quotes without translation - I did read it in other reviews, and I agree that it is simply ridiculous and annoying to reader. There are VERY many French-only quotes, without any translation, moreover, there are also sometimes sentences with sole one word in French, again without any translation. It is not only annoying, but also makes the book at times very hard to read. Also, as I do speak French myself, I can judge that not all the quotes would be understandable, as some of them are older-french, some are coloquial etc.
4. The author, especially towards the end is plain biased. And while I do think that comments from authors are very interesting, the bias in this book goes way beyond that - the historic events are many times just described and introduced in a very one-sided way.
5. Especially after 18th century, many VERY important events are just not described AT ALL. And while I know that it is simply not possible to describe everything in the same detailed way, the proportions are sometimes ridiculous - there is literally a sentence about Dunkirk, while the description about where exactly Germans moved while occupating Paris lasts for at least two pages.
6. There is definitelly too much focus on Paris is a book that should actually be about FRANCE. Especially before 17th/16th century it is just plain wrong to focus on Paris, while the power was not centralized there. Moreover, there are very many too detailed descriptions about Paris, including even adresses of places in Paris, that do not make that much difference for the story, while there is literally no description of any other city in France (while there were actually times where it was somewhere else, not in Paris, that the history was happening...). From this you can sort of see that, since the author did write before the book about Paris history, that he just used bits from it, instead of focusing on the France at scale.
7. Solely personal, but, especially towards the ending, the author sounds to me just plain pretentiously. Even not counting his personal anegdotes about "when I met Mitterand", instead of sticking to the facts, he has the tendency to fly away with his "philosofical" questions and biased comments, sometimes being even actually bit offensive towards French people...

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

French history has fascinated me for a long time so I spent a lot of time looking for a history of France book that encompassed its entire history - from Caesar to today. Looking for such a book was actually far harder than I thought. I could only ever find books on sections of her history. Finding this book ticked all my boxes. I wanted a juicy, interesting, detailed but succinct history. Although it says 'A short history', it has not been a short read. It has taken me 5 months to read it. Some chapters more interesting and easier, others were more surprisingly boring and required persevering.

Some may not like the fact that the author is British instead of French but I found this fact easy to forget after a while. The author bio does state he was Knighted for his efforts on French history so surely that must count for something. By the time you get to WW2 and later chapters one notices that the author starts making personal anecdotes and impressions of people like de Gaulle and Mitterand and situations like the Algerian war from having met them himself and lived in France during those periods. One also notices his humorous sarcastic comments in the footnote sections throughout the entire book. I didn't mind these. It made it for more interesting reading to a completely ignorant Anglo Saxon like myself who has only learned history from the Anglo Saxon angle. My only critique to the author - the hundreds of quotes written in french, none were translated for the benefit us non French speakers. It was very frustrating because I wanted to understand the quote in the paragraph as a whole and I couldn't and who wants to be constantly using Google translate while reading?

My most enjoyed chapters were 'Beginnings: Caesar to the Capetians', 'Henri IIs Sucession: The Wars of Religion', 'The Great Revolution', 'The Great War and Versailles', 'The Darkest Years' (WW2 occupation by Germany). I found the chapters on Napoleon boring and bleh, surprising considering Napoleon is the reason why I wanted to read French history in the first place.

This book gave me a greater and more improved understanding of France's influence in Europe and the world as a whole. I understood better, why France was far more suspicious of Germany and grieved of their losses in the wars than even Britain and America. Britain and America were assaulted, France essentially was raped then with a metaphorical gun to her head, proceeded to assault her own citizens. I found the enthusiam by de Gaulle for reconciliation and friendship with post war Germany all the more remarkable. Admittedly, France, it's people, its history are far more fickle in their extremes, it's as if they're incapable of moderation and gentle reform. I finished the book, liking France more but having a renewed thankfulness of my British roots (lol).

[Binston Birchill · Rating 3 out of 5]

La Belle France provides a cursory look at the history of France, it provides a brief overview the succession of rulers, their specific influence and military conquest/defeats alongside intermittent updates on overall culture. Paris is the obvious focal point throughout and you get to know more about the city itself than you do any particular person or era. While nothing is explored in depth, the snapshots into the different era's do provide a starting point for further research for those inclined to do so (I am). Writing a book of the history of France in 441 pages is not an easy task, the question, and my main complaint is, why stop at 441 pages? Surely, at the very least, Vercingetorix deserves the same, rather piddly, space, a paragraph, that Joan of Arc received. I think I'll leave it at that, otherwise I'll start worrying about whether those 6 commas in the previous sentence are grammatically correct.

[Anastasiya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the book overall. Gives relatively brief (450 pages long) introduction into french history. Though there are few buts....
First, the book is filled with quotes in french without translation anywhere (I guess author assumes if you are interested in french history you know french). It adds nice flavour of immersing into the culture, but at the same time makes it difficult to get the point.
Second, personally I didn't quite liked his anti-russian/anti-soviet attitude expressed via remarks and ignoring certain events. Remarks could be ignored. Though from objective point of view a historian should not be omitting certain facts when the topics like Napoleon and WWII are discussed.
Third, (this one is just personal preference) I wish he would spend more time on some topics I'm particularly interested in.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had four main problems with the book:
1. He jumps back and forth chronologically in a very confusing way. One minute, a king's mother is dead and the next minute, she's advising him.
2. There doesn't seem to be any linking between the fair number of pictures and the text. He never refers to them and they don't seem to follow the narrative.
3. World War II era in 30 pages--I realize it's necessary in such a short book but...
4. Name dropping. Thankfully, he can't do this for most of the book since, of course, he wasn't alive.

“I remember well an occasion, at a weekend in his country house, when his voice rose to a high pitch of indignation….” (writing of Valery Giscard d’Estaing)

“When I met Mitterand...”

Otherwise it is a decent basic history.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fairly interesting broad sweep of French history, from a moderatly conservative perspective. The author seems a bit unfair in his evaluation of the 1789 Revolution and the Paris Commune, and a bit two in bed with de Gaulle and Napoleon.

His writing style is a bit cumbersome at times, as he seems to try to force every little though and comment into a single and overly complex sentence. He also has a tendency to jump around in chronology that one who is not already familiar with the subject might find confusing.

He does make some minor errors (the US Presidential election was in 1968, not 1970), but the ones I noticed did not effect his hid overall narrative.

Still, I did enjoy this book and have learned allot from it.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brisk survey of French history from the Romans to the late 1990s. I read it to get an overview before visiting there this year, and it served that purpose well. The early chapters are little more than a parade of kings, but starting in the late Middle Ages it gets much better - more details, more variety (including social & cultural history along with the politics), amusing anecdotes, and quirky opinions from this crotchety, anglocentric francophile who has spent his long career gazing at France with a stern but loving eye. (The book's original British title was "Friend or Foe?"!)

[Nadine · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a disappointment! My first book about general French History and I pick one with a horrible writing. This author assumes you are familiar with French history, glosses over some important events, has the annoying habit of comparing historical events to future events and totally ignores 1995-2004.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

Breezy hand-waving survey of French history. The author tilts right (oh, how he hates the rabble) and is distinctly sexist. A few glaring errors (U.S. presidential elections in 1970?) were a bit disquieting too. But handy as a way of familiarizing myself with names, places and dates.

[Rafael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a solid, generalist history of France. Written in a breezy style, it does a good job of introducing readers to French history without bogging them down in detail. There's better, more comprehensive histories out there, but in a pinch, this will do nicely.

[Kevin Leung · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to learn about French history, this is a solid read. As you might expect, it's long, but the author has a bit of spunk that gives it some life.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good overview of French history, though I felt it was more a history of Paris than of greater France. Nevertheless, for those looking for a good introduction to the country, this isn't bad.

[Pat Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice read - even for people who say they don't like history. Try it.

[R.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned a lot but the author chose to go backward and forward in time throughout each chapter and that was a little annoying.

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

France has never had a period of stability longer than 2 generations.

[Edward Benyas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a very readable short history of France, and I’d like to read more of his books. I enjoy his little comparisons of various points in history with events in 20th century France. I was concerned about factual errors that seemed to crop up. For example, when discussing 1968, he erroneously noted that President Johnson decided not to run for reelection in 1970. But the election was that year, 1968, quite an obvious error. I’m sure there were quite a few others. One reviewer pointed out his emphasis on Paris without saying much about the rest of the country, and that is true and regrettable. So it was an enjoyable read, but not without a few bloopers.

[Holt Dwyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brisk and entertaining introduction to the history of France, full of piquant moments and memorable mots justes. The book is useful for filling in the gaps in French history that fall between the moments of greatest import to outsiders, and extend up through the presidency of Francois Mitterrand. The role of de Gaulle in managing France's postwar withdrawal from its colonizing heritage was new to me, as was the history of the Reformation in France. A fun and informative read!

[Geneva · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be a wonderful read and introduction to French history. The reason it took me so long to read however was that I got bored in the middle of it. Often the writer, a wonderful writer actually, would skip back-and-forth between dates for comparison, which is OK, except he did it so often, that it was too confusing.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief primer on French history that was immensely readable and rarely dull. Horne is a good writer and I always enjoy when a gifted historian is willing to cast off the cold language of objectivity and give a work a bit of a personal, subjective touch. Does a lot to cast the culture of the country and it’s current state into light.

[John Maclean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read La Belle France because we were headed to Paris this year; Alisair Horne's A Savage War of Peace is an outstanding piece of history writing and so I expected La Belle would be equally rewarding. Unfortunately this is not the incisive history I had hoped for; it wasn't bad but it was underwhelming and at times even superficial. I recommend looking elsewhere for a history of France.

[Jonny Moskowitz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful read and highly recommended to anybody who loves French history. Although I will say that this is not a beginner’s book: you need to have some background knowledge. If that is the case, you’ll love this book

[Andrew Tolkoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'We have achieved more than we intended,' declared the royalist conspirator Georges Cadoual, with acid humor as he courageously faces the scaffold in June 1804. 'We came to give France a king; we have given her an emperor.'" (213)

"On returning from prison camp, Rothschild observed to the old family butler, Felix, that the house must have been very quiet during the war; the butler replied: 'On the contrary, Monsieur Elie. There were receptions every evening.' 'But ... who came?' 'The same people Monsieur Elie. The same as before the war.'" (357)