The English have always regarded the French with a passionate mixture of love and hatred. Simultaneously divided and linked by the English Channel-or la Manche-both countries continue profoundly to affect the other for good or ill. In his delightfully impressionistic appreciation of Britain's closest neighbour, first published in 1987, 'unashamed Francophile' Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson separates cliché from fallacy to reveal the essence of France and the French.
