Volume 54, Number 5 · March 29, 2007
The Odd Couple
By Julian Barnes
That Sweet Enemy: The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present
by Robert and Isabelle Tombs
Knopf, 782 pp., $40.00
In January, a government document was discovered in the British national archives which, according to the Guardian newspaper, 'shocked historians.' This was the note, dated September 28, 1956, of a meeting in London between the British prime minister, the conservative and Francophile Anthony Eden, and his French equivalent, the socialist and Anglophile Guy Mollet—one of those rare encounters when two premiers spoke each other's language both fluently and willingly. Their more important business was to excite one another's imperial fantasies and prepare the correct duplicities to justify the Anglo-French invasion of Suez. However, at this rare moment of concord, Mollet suggested that the two countries unite; or, if not that, then at least France join the Commonwealth. The British note shows that Eden recommended 'immediate consideration' of the latter idea; also that Mollet 'had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of Her Majesty; [and] that the French would welcome a common citizenship arrangement on an Irish basis.'
Review, 4860 words
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