Dimensions
156 x 234 x 40mm
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.
