1st Edition

Cross Channel Currents 100 Years of the Entente Cordiale

Edited By Douglas Johnson, Richard Mayne, Robert Tombs Copyright 2004

    Cross Channel Currents explores the understandings and misunderstandings that make up the Entente Cordiale - the hundred-year relationship between Britain and France, as well as the everyday common interests and shared pleasures that give it substance.

    Contributors include the late Roy Jenkins, in a witty and personal view of Winston Churchill's relationship with France; Pierre Messmer, a companion of Charles de Gaulle during World War II and later his prime minister; former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who remembers the historic meeting of Edward Heath and Georges Pompidou; Hubert Vedrine, a former French foreign minister, on the difficulties of cross-Channel relations; and their successors Dominique de Villepin and Jack Straw.

    1. How the Entente Cordiale Began 2. The Entente and Germany 3. World War I: 1914-1918 4. Between the Wars 5. World War II: 1939-1945 6. The End of Empire: 1945-1997 7. France, Britain and Europe 8. The End of the Cold War: Mitterand and Thatcher 9. The Entente and America 10. The Entente and the Arts 11. The Narrowing Channel: The Entente Today 12. France and Britain in Tomorrow's Europe

    Biography

    Douglas Johnson is professor emeritus of French history, University of London.
    Richard Mayne is a writer and broadcaster. He was personal assistant to Jean Monnet, a senior official of the European Commission, and for six years its UK representative.
    Robert Tombs is a reader in French history at the University of Cambridge, and the author of France 1814-1914 (1996).

    'Cross-Channel Currents, a thought-provoking collection of fifty or so historical and political essays, reminiscences and futurology, by distinguished French and British authors, published to mark this week's hundredth anniversary of this elusive Entente.' - The Independent