France: An Adventure History

Product Information

First couple of chapters were needed to me to appreciate the style and the book came into its stride from the discussion about the tree at the centre of France - spotted on an old map and one of the places our author went to investigate. Going through the timeline and looking stuff up on Wikipedia was probably the most entertaining part for me. Who would have thought that even into the 18th century France was so divided, undeveloped… that you could get lost just trying to walk back to Paris.

What I mean is in each chapter, I couldn't help but feel like freefalling through time itself, seeing swathes of reality and abstractions that manifest themselves in what makes up France, both tangible and intangible. Other than Napoleon, the French Revolution, and Vichy France, I didn’t know much of anything about France’s history. From pre Roman Gaul to the present day challenges, tensions and inconsistencies of French society, the journey takes you through the lesser known and often amusing aspects of French history. Though possibly the biggest highlight was the chapter on Napoleon and particular his exile on St Helena in the South Atlantic where he met and befriended the young child, Betsy Balcombe.He connects the land to its history in a way that made me want to fly to France and see if I could follow his trail.

Rather difficult to describe, this is not any kind of traditional history but an account of the author's bicycle travels through France to relatively remote places where somewhat obscure events took place that illuminate aspects of French culture. Of France’s recent history of disiputes between the left and right, of violence against immigrants, and often flaring general populist grievances against the governments, Robb tries to put them in an historical context of France’s turbulent history.

Along the way, readers will find the usual faces, events and themes of French history – Louis XIV, the French Revolution, the French Resistance, the Tour de France – but all presented in a shining new light. Legendarily a giant elm growing at the spot where joined the corners of four counties and under whose shade the noble counts were said to parley, Robb locates the remnants of a not-unlikely candidate in a spot -- now entirely obscure -- that in his telling sat on a once-upon-a-Hundred Years' War highway along the eastern boundary of English-controlled France and very close to the geographical center of the Frexagon.