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Lead book review

Graham Robb deserves to be a French national treasure

Philip Hensher is enthralled by Graham Robb’s evocative new history of France

12 March 2022

9:00 AM

12 March 2022

9:00 AM

France: An Adventure History Graham Robb

Picador, pp.496, 25

This is a ceaselessly interesting, knowledgeable and evocative book about France over thousands of years. Is it at all likely to have been produced by a French writer? Though it’s about some deeply serious subjects, it’s very amusing; it makes no attempt to constrain itself within an overarching theoretical framework; it would be impossible to extract from it a grand statement beginning ‘The French are all…’; it is pragmatic, full of enterprising scholarly initiative and a gift for observation without intruding.

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