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1,000 years of being the closest of enemies
Dominic Sandbrook26.03.08
The Queen's new guest, Nicolas Sarkozy, is that rare beast, a Gallic Anglophile. He stands as a reminder that while our relationship with our neighbours was at least fairly predictable during the centuries of war, it has rarely been stranger or more fluid than in today's globalised world.
During much of the Middle Ages, though regularly at war with the French, England's rulers spoke French and spent much of their time across the Channel. Technically they were vassals to the French king - not something President Sarkozy should bring up over the Windsor dinner table.
Occasionally the medieval Anglo-French relationship even took a bizarre physical turn. Not only did England's kings usually marry French princesses, but in 1187 Richard the Lionheart shared his bed with the king of France to mark their diplomatic alliance. And in 1520, at the summit of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, Henry VIII challenged the French king to a one-on-one public wrestling match. Embarrassingly, Henry lost.
Even through the centuries of imperial rivalry that followed, England and France remained the closest of enemies. One guidebook warned 18th-century English tourists that "coarse" French women were best avoided, but wealthy sex tourists left London equipped with "French letters" and came back with piles of Gallic pornography.
Prosperous Englishmen both admired and scorned the foppish pretensions of their neighbours. "Dullness is our line," wrote Trollope proudly, "as cleverness is that of the French." But the very look of Victorian Britain, supposedly a temple to the Protestant, anti-French virtues of pragmatism, sobriety and hard work, was partly inspired by the old foe. For without Augustus Pugin and Isambard Kingdom Brunel - both the children of French immigrants - patriotic symbols such as the Houses of Parliament and Great Western Railway might look very different.
Paradoxically, since serious military and political rivalry disappeared in the late 19th century, the relationship has become increasingly unpredictable. Who would have thought that, as the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, Churchill would soon propose eternal political union between our two countries - or that, less than 25 years later, De Gaulle would thank us by vetoing British membership of the Common Market?
And certainly nobody could have foreseen the past decade's migration of middle-class English families to the south of France, or of 250,000 young French workers to London.
Not only that, but Sarko has some big shoes to fill, for his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was reportedly the Queen's favourite foreign head of state. He will doubtless manage. But thank goodness protocol no longer demands he emulate Richard the Lionheart's sleeping arrangements.
