Robert Tombs
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Robert Tombs’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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As a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realize they were French through fighting the English.
Both for quite a long time now.
Indeed, the French, I suppose since the Battle of Waterloo, have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline.
The idea of European integration was to make sure that Germany was no longer endangered to France, and secondly, to make sure that France was essentially.
leading Europe.
So that's how France becomes a great power again.
Brexit was the way of reasserting our position as a great nation.
It's their their great national project and has been for a long time now.
And therefore for the British to walk away from it was a kind of slap in the face.
But it also meant that the French absolutely want Brexit to fail.
In many ways we respond to the same challenges in opposite ways.
most fun book I've ever done, I think, by a long way.
We were co-authors.
matter.
It does really.
In fact
both England originally and France, and to some extent Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
developed identities, their own identities through the conflict.
There are the Scots with their alliance with France, us with our long conflict with France, and the French, uh as a great nineteenth century French historian said, the French came to realise they were French through fighting the English, in this is in the first hundred years' war.
And you might say, well
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