GeneralAlfred Cobban A History of Modern France (3 vols: 1715–99, 1799–1871 and 1871–1962; Penguin; Viking). Complete and very readable account of the main political, social and economic strands in French history from the death of Louis XIV to mid-de Gaulle. Colin Jones The Cambridge Illustrated History of France (CUP, UK, o/p). A political and social history of France from prehistoric times to the mid-1990s, concentrating on issues of regionalism, gender, race and class. Good illustrations and a friendly, non-academic writing style. Theodore Zeldin France 1845–1945 (OUP, UK). Five thematic volumes on diverse French matters – all good reads. The Middle Ages Natalie Zemon Davis The Return of Martin Guerre (Harvard UP, US). A vivid account of peasant life in the sixteenth century and a perplexing and titillating hoax in the Pyrenean village of Artigat. J. H. Huizinga The Waning of the Middle Ages (Penguin/Dover). Primarily a study of the culture of the Burgundian and French courts – but a masterpiece that goes far beyond this, building up meticulous detail to recreate the whole life and mentality of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. R. J. Knecht Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I (Cambridge University Press, UK). Fascinating account of one of the great Renaissance kings by a leading academic. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie Montaillou (Penguin/Random House). Village gossip of who's sleeping with whom, tales of trips to Spain and details of work, all extracted by the Inquisition from Cathar peasants of the eastern Pyrenees in the fourteenth century, and stored away until recently in the Vatican archives. Though academic and heavy going in places, most of this book reads like a novel. Nancy Mitford Madame de Pompadour (Penguin; New York Review of Books Classics). Mitford's unashamedly biased admiration for Pompadour – Louis XV's mistress and France's greatest art patron – makes this a fascinating read. Stephen O'Shea The Perfect Heresy (Walker & Co, US). Lively but partisan non-academic account of the history of the Cathars and their faith and the Catholic campaign mounted to wipe them out. Saint-Simon Saint-Simon at Versailles (Hamish Hamilton/Random House, o/p). A courtier under Louis XIV, and an addictively prolific diarist, the Duc de Saint-Simon had a sharp eye and a gift for anecdotes that brings alive the extraordinary world of Versailles. This edition admirably condensed in three volumes by Lucy Norton. Barbara Tuchman A Distant Mirror (Papermac; Ballantine). The history of the fourteenth century – plagues, wars, peasant uprisings and crusades – told through the life of a sympathetic French nobleman whose career takes him through England, Italy and Byzantium and finally ends in a Turkish prison. Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Dorothy Carrington Napoleon and his Parents on the Threshold of History (NAL-Dutton, US, o/p). Lucid study of Napoléon's early years. Rupert Christiansen Tales of the New Babylon, Paris 1869–1875 (Minerva/published in US as Paris Babylon by Penguin). The compulsive and irresistible story of Paris in the last years of the Second Empire and the physical and social upheavals of the Prussian siege and the Commune. It combines a serious historical overview with tabloid-style detail. Richard Cobb & Colin Jones (eds) The French Revolution (Simon & Schuster, o/p). One of the best 1989 offerings on 1789 with lots of pictures, texts of the time and clear explanations by a host of historians. Vincent Cronin Napoleon (Fontana/Harper-Collins). Enthusiastic and accessible biography. Norman Hampson A Social History of the French Revolution (Routledge/Kegan & Paul). An analysis that concentrates on the personalities involved. Its particular interest lies in the attention it gives to the sans-culottes, the ordinary poor of Paris. Christopher Hibbert The French Revolution (Penguin). Well-paced and entertaining narrative treatment by a master historian. Alistair Horne The Fall of Paris (Papermac/Penguin, o/p/Books on Tape). A very readable and humane account of the extraordinary period of the Prussian siege of Paris in 1870 and the ensuing struggles of the Commune. Lissagaray History of the Paris Commune (New Park, UK, o/p). A highly personal and partisan account of the politics and fighting by a participant. Although Lissagaray is reticent about it, history has it that the last solitary Communard on the last barricade – in rue Ramponneau in Belleville – was in fact himself. Philip Mansel Paris Between Empires (John Murray/St Martin's Press). Passionate and meticulous account of Parisian politics and society in the fragile, revolution-bedevilled period between the end of Napoléon's empire and the beginning of Napoléon III's. Karl Marx On the Paris Commune (Lawrence & Wishart in the collected works; Pathfinder). Rousing prose from Karl, along with a history of the Commune by Engels. Peter McPhee A Social History of France 1780–1880 (Routledge, o/p). A scholarly work arguing that historians have underestimated the fundamental differences between how people lived and thought in 1880 compared with the time of the 1789 Revolution. He goes into such subjects as relations between men and women, the loss of diversity in rural France of languages and culture, and changes in the physical environment. Thomas Paine The Rights of Man (Penguin). Written in 1791 in response to English conservatives' views on the situation in France, this reasoned and passionate tract expresses the ideas of both the American and French revolutions. It was immediately banned on publication, and its author charged with treason, but enough copies had crossed the Channel and been translated for Paine to be elected to the Convention by the people of Calais. Simon Schama Citizens (Penguin/Random House). Bestselling and highly tendentious revisionist history of the Revolution, which pretty well takes the line that the ideologues of the Revolution were a gang of fanatics who simply failed to see how good the ancien régime was. It reveals as much about the intellectual climate of conservative America in the 1980s as it does about 1789, but it's a well-written, racy and provocative book. Chantal Thomas The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie-Antionette (Zone Books). Scholarly but lively review of the muckraking of France's most infamous queen, orginally published in French in 1989. Draws in a host of colourful characters of aristocratic and revolutionary Paris, and contains translations of the sensationalist pamphlets which were written against the queen. J. M. Thompson The French Revolution (Blackwell). A detailed and passionate account, first published in 1943, but still a classic. Twentieth century Marc Bloch Strange Defeat (Norton). Moving personal study of the reasons for France's defeat and subsequent caving-in to fascism. Found among the papers of this Sorbonne historian after his death at the hands of the Gestapo in 1942. Geoff Dyer The Missing of the Somme (Penguin, UK, o/p). Structured round the author's visits to the war graves of northern France, this is a highly moving meditation on the trauma of World War I and the way its memory has been perpetuated. Robert Gildea France Since 1945 (Oxford University Press, UK). Pithy but serious contemporary history, with a particular interest in France's national self-image. H. R. Kedward In Search of the Maquis: Rural Resistance in South France 1942–44 (OUP, UK, o/p). Slightly dry style, but full of fascinating detail about the brave and often mortal struggle of the countless ordinary people across France who fought to drive the Germans from their country. François Maspero Cat's Grin (New Amsterdam Books, US). Semi-autobiographical novel about a young teenager in Paris during the war with his brother in the Resistance, his parents taken to concentration camps as Paris is liberated, and everyone else busily collaborating. An intensely moving and revealing account of the war period. Barbara Tuchman The Proud Tower (Papermac/Ballantine). A portrait of England, France, the US, Germany and Russia in the years 1890–1914. Written in Tuchman's inimitable and readable style, it includes a superb chapter on the extraordinary passions and enmities of the Dreyfus Affair which rocked French society between 1894 and 1899 and on the different currents in the rising socialist movement in the run-up to World War I, centring on the life of Jean Jaurès. Paul Webster Pétain's Crime: The Full Story of French Collaboration in the Holocaust (Papermac/IR Dee). The fascinating and alarming story of the Vichy regime's more than willing collaboration with the Holocaust and the bravery of those, especially the Communist resistance in occupied France, who attempted to prevent it. Alexander Worth France 1940–55 (Beacon Press, US, o/p). Extremely good and emotionally engaged portrayal of the taboo Occupation period in French history, followed by the Cold War and colonial struggle years in which the same political tensions and heart-searchings were at play.
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