TRIGGERnometry - Historian Robert Tombs on the 1,000-Year Rivalry Between Britain And France

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

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20% discount code again is trigonometry at sheath.com. Spotify advertising connects you with an audience that's engaged and ready to discover your brand. Launch a campaign with Spotify Ads Manager. As a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realize they were French through fighting the English. Both for quite a long time now, indeed the French, I suppose since the Battle of Waterloo, have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline. The idea of European integration was to make sure that Germany was no longer endangered France. And secondly, to make sure that France was essentially leading Europe.

So that's how France becomes a great power again. Brexit was the way of reasserting our position as a great nation. It's their great national project and has been for a long time now. And therefore, for the British to walk away from it was a kind of slap in the face. But it also meant that the French absolutely want Brexit to fail. In many ways, we respond to the same challenges in opposite ways. Are you too popular? Is life too easy? Then head over to our merch store and change your life forever by telling the world you watch Trigonometry.

You'll be able to buy hoodies, t-shirts, caps, stickers, posters, and of course, the world-famous Trigonometry Mug. Go to shop.orgotriggerpod.com.com.com.com.uk.k.combe. and become part of the show. Historian Robert Toom is such a pleasure to have you on the show. It's great to be here. It's wonderful to have you. There are so many different things that we could talk about. We love discussing history with eminent historians like you.

The one thing that we wanted to focus is something you cover in one of your books, which is the England versus France, or now Britain versus France rivalry. The most fun book I've ever done, I think, by a long way. And you have personal experience. I think you're married to a French lady. Yes, we were co-authors. Yes, indeed. So the rivalry is injected throughout. Yes, it's in the book. That's right. Tell us about England and France and the rivalry between these two.

I mean, I was about to say countries, but actually it proceeds the existence of countries at all, doesn't it? It does really. In fact, both England originally and France, and to some extent to Ireland Scotland, Wales, developed identities, their own identities through the conflict. The Scots with their alliance with France, us with our long conflict with France, and the French, as a great 19th century French historian said, the French came to realize they were French through fighting English. This is in the first 100 years war.

And you might say, well, why is it still kind of there? And I think the answer's fairly plain. both France and Britain have had huge influences on world history in the last 300 years. They've been major players on the world stage. And often as rivals, indeed quite often as enemies, sometimes as allies, quite often as enemies. And they've got to be obsessed with each other and like to see each other as opposites, though in my view, they're in some ways rather similar. And another thing is that both for quite a long time now, indeed the French, I suppose, since the Battle of Waterloo, have been rather obsessed with the idea that they are nations in decline. We all know that now.

And you go to France, they'll say, you know, nothing works here anymore, which is what we say all the time. There's a sense of countries in decline and even in crisis. And you might say, well, why does that play into the Anglo-French thing? And I think it's because both are really rather keen that the others should be doing worse than them. You know, you look at Le Monde or look at the Times and you see reports on things happening in France, fires in France, strikes in France. And if you look at the French press, it's often about unemployment in Britain. Another prime minister goes in Britain. Aren't we well off compared with them?

I think it's quite important in both countries to see themselves as doing at least not as badly as the other one. Although, you know, when we go there, of course, the other reaction is for people who are rather keen on the idea that their own country is in decline, which many people are to go to France, in our case, or them to come here and say, wow, you know, we went to wherever, and it was really great, you know, the trains ran on time, the hospitals were great, you know, why are we so awful compared with them? So this kind of obsession works in all sorts of ways. And I suppose the thing that added to it was obviously Brexit. Because the EU, European integration, is something the French have been working hard at for at least a century. In the 1920s, they first proposed it. And it's really always been a French project. And it's something which the French establishment agrees is something which is fundamentally in France's interest. Indeed, it's their great national project and has been.

for a long time now. And therefore, for the British to walk away from it was a kind of slap in the face. But it also meant that the French absolutely want Brexit to fail. You know, it has to fail. Because if it looked like succeeding or even not being a disaster, it would reflect badly on the whole EU project. So, of course, the French want it to fail, or at least be seen and be seen to fail. And so this has re-injected a new element into the old story of the rivalry. And what is it about the mindset of the French elites, as you describe it, that makes them think that the European Union is in the interests of France and a good idea more generally? Well, I think essentially it was the conflict with Germany. You know, one shouldn't assume, of course, well, we don't, that any country has an exclusive relationship with another. We and the French, of course, have one. But we also have ours with the Americans. We aspire to a special relationship with America.

the French have a similar relationship with Germany. Because the German, as we know, after all, did invade France three times in 150 years. And therefore, the European integration project was essentially to make sure that Germany was never a threat again. And although, you know, so rather as we do with the Americans, the French are very keen to show how wonderful their relations with Germany are. Because these fray occasionally, as we know. But lots of gestures about friendship and special friendship and so on, because it can't be accepted that this isn't true. And so the EU, from the very beginning, the idea of European integration was to make sure that Germany was no longer a danger to France. And secondly, to make sure that France was essentially leading Europe.

So that's how France becomes a great power again. The goal said very, very shrewdly, we have to behave like a great power because we no longer are one. And leading Europe has been the French thing since the 1950s. And nothing that can be allowed to get in the way of that. I see. So if you're no longer a great power, but you sit atop of the European conglomerate, you then are effectively projecting power for 500 million people that live in Europe. So you hope.

So you hope. And you are therefore powerful again. Yes. That's really interesting. And of course, coming back to the history of it, my understanding, and do correct me if this is wrong, is one of the reasons there has been this great rivalry between Britain and France many times in history is that Britain's England and then later Britain has perceived its national interest to be to prevent the emergence of a hegemonic power on the continent. Yes.

To which France has repeatedly aspired. And Brexit, you might argue, is yet the latest. situation of that. Yeah, absolutely. Indeed, you know, again, this fits into the story, as you say, because for the French to make Europe is the reassertion of their greatness as a nation. For Britain, at least for those who supported Brexit, Brexit was the way of reasserting our position as a great nation, no longer simply part of a bloc.

So in many ways, we respond to the same challenges in opposite ways. So this goes back to the 1950s very obviously when European integration after the Second World War got off to another start. So what happened, of course, we all know about this, well, I'm not sure how many people under the age of 30 do, but we sort of know about the Suez crisis in which both France and Britain made an attempt together to assert their power as imperial powers, you know, the last to Ra, if you like, of France and Britain as independent global powers. And it didn't work because the Americans, and to some extent the Russians, said no. So what happened? The French

say we must, therefore, we'll never trust the Americans again. We must look to Europe. That is our only, in a sense, our only real policy. And the British, on the other hand, say, we must never quarrel again with the Americans. And so America and the relationship with America will be our policy. So although the British did join the, of course, the common market, as it then was, it was always rather reluctantly and conditionally, you know, okay, this is just a trade bloc. We don't want any talk of federalism. We're not going to go along with the session of sovereignty, etc., etc. Whereas for the French, that was always really the object. It was to make Europe a great power, in a sense with its capital in Paris, to stand up to the Americans. Whereas,

for the British it was always how to be nice to the Americans. And as we saw with at the time of Brexit, the Americans basically say, we want you to be in this European thing because we'll be sure that you'll be on our side. Or as the French would say, you're our Trojan horse or you're our poodle and you will do what we say and you'll make sure the Europeans don't do anything against our interests. Whereas for us, the American relationship was seen as a kind of the the major player and the European membership of Europe was was really a secondary matter. That's something the Americans wanted and something that would probably be quite good for the economy, though it never really was. But it was not the centre of our foreign policy as it was

for the French establishment. You know, I'm generalising, obviously, but insofar as we can generalise about a consensus view among British politicians, officials, diplomats, we can say the same about the French. And they, well, you might say the foreign office tends to take a rather French view of things, at least it has in recent years, but traditionally there's been a clear difference between British and French views of their own, of their own national interest. And one of the things that you actually mentioned about in the book, Robert, which I enjoyed very, very much, and I recommend everyone to get, is when you were talking about Napoleon, Napoleon's vision for Europe was actually kind of similar to the European Union vision, wasn't it, in many ways?

It was in a way. I mean, Napoleon was a great modernizer, as he saw it. Indeed, you could say what he really was. He did say at one point, there's not enough sameness in the European nations. So a single system of law, single system of administration, okay, an empire, but it was a largely a bureaucratic and military empire, it was meant to be something that would sweep away the old distinctions, the old conflicts, and some things he did, abolishing feudalism, abolishing the power of churches, putting a stock to anti-Semitism, those were things that, of course, many people in Europe welcomed. The British, again, saw it differently.

We didn't ever want a Europe which would be dominated by Napoleon. And indeed, we weren't terribly keen on his idea of what a modern Europe should look like. So, you know, for that reason, the conflict went on for whatever, however many years it was, 15 years, 20 years. And it became a global conflict, and it was one that really set the pattern of power in the world for, well, for more than a century. Well, for a century anyway. And before we really focus about Napoleon, because we're obviously going to want to talk about him, it seems as well that his ideas not only were generated through his own vision, but they also came from the French Revolution as well, didn't they?

So let's talk about the French Revolution. Why was it so important? And what affects did it have not only in France, but in Europe, but also the UK as well, Great Britain at the time? Well, I take up, I'm not sure this is a sort of slightly heretical view. I take a rather reductionist view. I mean, people talking about the French Revolution, they go on about the ideas of the Enlightenment,

the ideas about democracy, how the French learned from the Americans, life limit is all that stuff. And therefore they decided they wanted to have a revolution which would modernize the country and bring it. Well, it seems to me that the French Revolution was essentially a reaction to defeat. The French had lost the seven years war.

They won the War of American, the American War of Independence. That was their great victory, but they got nothing out of it, except vast debts. They then found that they were pretty well neutered on the world stage because of their lack of money, very familiar story. And the revolution came because they almost became a failed great power. Okay, you know, yes, the peasants and the workers, all that, the storming of the Bastille, all that happened, of course.

essentially well actually Burke said this if I can remember it correctly he said the French Revolution was not to make France happy was to make her powerful and I think the revolution was really about recreating France as a as a power and you know you could say well people like Robespierre or Dantor and so on they were they were very keen on the people's rights weren't they yes they were they were also very keen on spreading French influence across Europe. And in a way, Napoleon didn't really change that. What he did was to, as he said, he cleaned it up. He cleaned the mud off the French revolution and gave it permanent institutions. But the French dominance of Europe was something

that they all agreed on. And it was a concern for Britain at the time, wasn't it, when what was happening? And Britain was in a quandary because they were, on the one hand, this. was this ancient enemy. On the other hand, it was kind of better the devil you know with the royal family, wasn't it? Well, when the Bastille fell, the British ambassador was keen to calm things down. This is in the book, by the way, but it's a nice story. He decided that a cricket tour would be rather a good idea to calm the French down. So he recruited a cricket team.

The power and intellect of British democracy through the ages. Well, Marianne Ternet was supposed to have kept his bat as a souvenir, but cricket didn't catch on in France for quite a long time. But the British, first of all, thought, wow, this is great. France is turning into a new version of Britain. And if Louis XVIth is taken down a peg or two, that suits us very well. France will be weaker, and hence we will be stronger. What they didn't, of course, realize at first was that it wouldn't make France weaker. It would make France stronger.

and Britain went to war with the French Revolution, not really because we didn't like the ideas of the revolution, because a lot of people did. The Wings did, Charles James Fox did, all those people thought it was great. It was because the French were going to invade Holland. And that, you know, brings you back to the oldest and most permanent part of British European policy, which is we don't want a potential enemy in the low countries.

because if you want to invade Britain, if you want to invade England, at least, if you want to sail up the Thames Estuary, that's the place to do it from. It doesn't matter you can have a navy in Toulon or in Brest. That's a safe distance away. You can't have an enemy navy navy in Ostend or Rotterdam, and that's why we went to war with the French. And also as well, they got involved in Ireland, didn't they? They did, yes.

Well, of course, our relations with Ireland, as the late Queen said, have not been, have not in every way been what we would wish. And still not. But what the English were particularly interested in Ireland force in order to stop it being used as a jumping off point for an invasion. That almost that's the only thing that really counted deep down. But of course it was, it was always potentially the place that the enemy would invade you from, if Ireland was independent. Is it now really independent? Well, it's kind of disarmed and neutral. That's the next best thing, I suppose.

But if Ireland was, you know, in the past there'd been a potential ally of Spain, then a potential ally of France, in the Second World War, a potential ally of Germany, these were things that Britain could not accept. and in the Second World War, it was made pretty clear to the Irish government that they had to be very careful than they were. De Valera, the president did, as you probably know, present his condolences to the German legation when poor Herr Hitler met a sticky end. But apart from that, they didn't much help the, they didn't really help the Germans. The IRA would have done if they could have done, but they didn't get round to it. The people who watch this show have generally done more thinking about how governments operate the most. But there's a difference between understanding the problem and having actually built insulation against it.

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Because it wasn't instantaneous. No, no. It's kind of a patent. Or at least you can see it as a patent. You know, what is a revolution? You have a breakdown, you know, fall of the Bastille, the storming of the Winter Palace in Russia, whatever, the collapse of the old regime.

And then you have a period of chaos. Everybody says we want our piece of the action. So the workers join in, the peasants join it, the army joins it, whatever. And then sooner or later people say, this is awful, this is worse than it was before. We need somebody to restore order. In the French case, it was Napoleon. In the Russian case, it was, well, Lenin and then Stalin. And, you know, many people say, well, okay, this isn't what we really wanted or expected,

but above all, we want to get back to living our lives, earning our living, and we're willing to accept, in fact, a stronger and more authoritarian system than we had before. So you storm the Bastille, or you get rid of Zah, Nicholas II. But you find you've ended up with the government that is much more powerful and much more oppressive than they were. And most people say, well, thank goodness for that. Because we've had enough of all the killing, the violence, the chaos, the poverty, the inflation, you know, all that. And in the book, you actually say that Napoleon was the last Frenchman to transform Britain. Yeah, but he was really.

The last one who's really had a major effect on us. I mean, to go, not really, I think. But Napoleon is someone who forced Britain to mobilize itself in a way to never done before in defense. to a quite extraordinary extent I can't I'm not sure I remember all the figures but you know something like 40% of all British men were doing some sort of military service it's sort of you know this is this is World War this is 20th century levels of mobilisation and it was done largely by amateurs by local government by Lords Lieutenant mayors or that vickers parish councils and

And I think that meant you could never really put the court back into the bottle in the sense that people have seen them, that they themselves are effectively citizens. And therefore, why do they should have a right to have some say in politics? And after the, it's not the only reason, but, you know, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, you do have a radical movement that says we're not willing to go back to the system in which a small minority, even if they were quite good, run things and most people just do as they're told. Yeah, let's elect idiots to run everything badly. How well that is working out. Well, actually, I mean, the 18th century statement worked quite well. That's what I'm kind of jokingly.

Yes, I know. I was curious about something you keep hinting at in terms of the ideas of the French Revolution and Britain and other. countries because I'm reading between the lines of what you're saying and it sounds like you're debunking a myth that I had in my head perhaps and you know feel free to carry on which I sort of thought well you know the English and the British okay you execute a king you have your own Napoleon in Oliver Cromwell yes exactly and then you decide actually no we don't want to do this and you go back to having a royal family whereas the French really really go at it they change the

weight system, the measurements, they do, yes. They get rid of state, all of this. Yes. And I sort of thought, well, you know, there's the British way of doing things and there's a French way of doing things and they're radically different. Yes. You keep hinting that that isn't quite right. Well, I don't think it is quite right. In fact, it's funny that some, there was a school of French historians in the early 19th century who believed that history followed certain patterns. And Britain, in exactly the way you said, had set the pattern. So you have an old regime, Charles I first, then you have a revolution and you execute the king, and then you have a dictator, Oliver Cromwell, and then you restore the monarchy and you have a parliamentary

system. And they said, ah, that's just what's happening in France. We had Louis XVIth, we had Rob Spier, we had Napoleon, and now we're going to bring back, we're going to restore the monarchy. And so they restored Louis X. And then that didn't work. So they had another go, and they restored Louis-Philippe. So they had two more goes at monarchy after the revolution. And then they had a third go, which was Napoleon the third, another monarchy. So, you know, we think, oh, well, 1793 was the end of the French monarchy. Well, it wasn't actually because it went on until 1870. And indeed, there's no reason to think it wouldn't have carried on had they not been invaded successfully by Germany.

You know, it's usually defeat in war that makes revolutions possible. Russian revolution certainly. Russia is, of course, the classic example, but China too. And Germany and Austria. It's when the state is defeated and proves that it's no longer capable of defending the country that it goes. Sometimes it just goes. You know, there's nothing left. Sometimes it's overthrown.

And then you have a revolution. Well, you know, if you want to say, what's the great fact about British history? Well, we haven't been successfully... Well, we have been invaded. We haven't been conquered since 1066. And that is a great reason for having a pretty stable system. You might say, what a pity we didn't have a few revolutions on the way. Well, we had the, as you say, we had 1649.

But was it a real revolution? It was a religious war. And it was something that was never really popular. Most people always supported the monarchy. Indeed, most people on the parliamentary side supported monarchy. they executed Charles I first because they felt they had no choice in the matter but they didn't really want to do it so you know it was a sort of semi-revolution and as you probably know that the famous levelers who are often sort of promoted as the the inventors of English

democracy they eventually went over to Charles II almost everybody wanted a restoration by the end which wasn't the same which wasn't true in France or at least if they wanted a restoration they They weren't sure which monarch they wanted back. And that in some ways is, you know, if you wanted an explanation of French instability in the 19th century, and even up to now, it's because they've never really wholly agreed on the system of government. So you have to keep trying new ones.

So I used to know how many constitutions France had since 1789. It's quite a lot. And of course, we've never had a... codified constitution so in France you you say we had an ancient monarchy which is now gone well a we have to restore it or B we have to find some alternative or C we have to have a democratic reformic or D we have to have an authoritarian system and that that argument has occasionally died down but it's never entirely gone away and what you know what you see now is is was macko when he first was elected

said he intended to rule, you know, like Jupiter. He was going to be this great national leader who would not get involved in the dirty details of everyday politics. He would be there as the guide of the nation, a kind of monarch, a republican monarch. And when that goes wrong, what do the French say? They say, we've got to have a sixth republic then. We're now on the fifth. We'll have to have a sixth, because we have to find the system that works.

whereas our reaction, of course, as we have no experience of that kind of constitution making is to say we have to sort of tweak the system a bit. You know, we have to reform the House of Lords or we have to devolve a bit to the regions. But you don't have anyone saying what we need is to have a constitutional Congress in which we will thrash out in detail

exactly how we're going to govern the country in future. It doesn't really occur to anybody in this country. Except maybe if you live down, And I was, one of the things that is interesting to us, you know, we spent a significant chunk of time on the show, you know, in previous years, certainly talking about the kind of woke revolution that was running a mock across the, particularly the Anglosphere, I would argue. And yet there are people who chart some of the origins of the ideas to the ideas of the French Revolution, the sort of radical egalitarianism, the overthrowing of all hierarchy, etc. Is that a fair, fair assessment? Well, I think the French Revolution, and indeed later, I mean the Paris Commune, which I used to work on in my youth, was a good example. It gives people a kind of vision, which may be a very inaccurate one, a myth, a mythical vision of what the French call or used to call Le Grand Suoir, which is the great evening.

You know, after the revolution has taken place, you can all go out and get drunk and have a great, because this is the end of the old system. And then, of course, you have to wake up next morning and try and do something else. And that's where it tends to go wrong. The hangover tends to be really bad. But, you know, this vision of a revolutionary, a great, you know, it's very popular. In some places, it's then to popular culture with things like Les Miserables. You think, wow, you know, if only we could build a few barricades and wouldn't it all be great? And so there are people who go for that kind of thing.

And I think it is, the myth is largely down to the French. You know, even if you want to have a Nigel Farage, anti-Nydrage t-shirt, you put a guillotine on it. You could put a gallows on it, but somehow that's not, hasn't got the romantic appeal of chopping people's heads off. And, you know, we talk about heads rolling. It's this kind of myth of. Well, I suppose, sorry to interject, I suppose guillotine is a weapon of the people, whereas the gallows is a weapon of the state. Yes, of course, the people have often strung people. Oh, quite. Yeah, with no gallows whatsoever. A tree branch will do, obviously.

And so it's interesting to me that that's, and one of the other things that I've often thought about is we call the American Revolution, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, the French Revolution. The American Revolution was not a revolution. No. It's funny because the Americans used to call it. I mean, maybe we've adopted American things as we so often do. But we used to call it the American War of Independence, which is what it was. Correct. Which is why it's my point was, it's why it was successful. Yes.

Versus the French Revolution creating a bloodbath is direct consequence of the fact you're not separating from an imperial power that's in your perception, keeping you oppressed. Yes. You are overthrowing the existing regime, creating a power vacuum, and the bloodletting is inevitably the consequence of that. Yes. And one of... And the bizarre glorious revolution, which is, in some ways, more of a model for the American. You get rid of a monarch whom you say is oppressing you, but you don't allow it to get out of hand. You don't allow the mob to rule. You basically keep in the hands of intelligent people like us who will tell the plebs to go back to work and calm down.

That's right. And one of the things I long under appreciated is just how much the money that the French spent trying to screw over the British and supporting the American independence, ended up impoverishing them, indebting them, and causing the French Revolution. Yeah, well, it basically bankrupted the monarchy. And the reason they had to call a meeting of the Estates General, which was the first step,

which was effectively the end of the old regime, in which the law was what the king said it was. There's a wonderful speech that was made by Louis XVIth. to the Paris Parliament, which was essentially a Supreme Court, in which he said, he more or less said, I am the state, all power resides in me. The law is what is my will. No power can be exercised by anyone apart from outside me. No other institution has any power apart from the power I give it. And that was what the monarchy was. And that collapses. You have to find another way of doing it. But it collapsed when they call the Estates General.

basically said, you know, gentlemen, we've run out of money. We want you to meet and agree to give us a lot more. And they basically said, that's not what we're going to do. You know, if you want any money, you're going to have to agree to a constitution and we're going to change the whole system, and that's what happened. But it was essentially a response to state bankruptcy, which, and the bankruptcy came about through fighting too many wars with Britain. So we won, thanks to the city of London, and be able to raise fabulous amounts of money. And because people thought, I hope they still do think that,

that Parliament will ensure that people who buy British guilts will not be ripped off. Whereas in France, you could be. You know, the king could say, well, we're not paying you. Too bad. I mean, we should never trust the French. You are absolutely correct. Of course, they've got the euro now, so they can't do that anymore.

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because to me that seemed like the last, shall we just say hurrah for France itself, this chance to be a global power. So. In retrospect. In retrospect, absolutely. Because they didn't think that at the time, of course. Nor did anybody else, I think.

Yes, I think you're right. France at that time, sorry, I'm interrupting you. No, no, no, no. You are the interviewee, so you should be talking. We're interrupting you. I mean, France had by far the largest population in Europe, 20 million people. That was double the population of Britain, larger than Austria, about the same as Russia. General de Gaulle said that he wanted a France of 100 million people.

And I think I did a rough calculation once. If the French population from the late 18th century had grown at the same rate as the British, France would have would have a population of 180 million, which you might say is sort of natural. You know, it's twice the size of Britain. So if we have 70 million people, the French could certainly have 150 million, but they haven't.

But the reasons why are somewhat mysterious, but everybody else was doubling their population and the French stopped having babies, or stopped having so many. And that may be an effect of the revolution, maybe an effect of the Napoleonic Wars, but whatever the reason it happened. So France's

limited, France's superpower status partly went, because for demographic reasons, by 1870, when they fought Germany, Germany had had an equal population with France. 20 years later,

it had a much larger population than France. And so France's power, insofar as power depends on people, and in those days, and perhaps even now, to a large extent, it still does. France was evidently in decline. But so you could say that Napoleonic Wars was the last chance for France

to be the global hegemonic power. After a, if they'd kicked us out of India, which Napoleon wanted, if they'd defeated the Russians, if they'd set up a kind of European imperial federation, then that would have been it. So, you know, as the old joke says, we'd all be speaking French. And France, in some ways, was a much better place than Britain to be the global, the great global power, because culturally it was regarded as superior.

The French language in the 18th century was the international language. So why was the 19th century, in a sense the British century rather than the French century? And it could have been under Napoleon. It could well have been. So why didn't Napoleon win? Well, I mean, many French people at the time and later said, because he tried to do too much. After all, Britain never tried to conquer Europe

or indeed conquer the globe. Napoleon, in a sense, tried to conquer everything. You can't do it that way, as the Americans have realized in recent. years. So maybe Napoleon did too much. One thing he couldn't do was to invade Britain. Had he managed to do that, then he would have won. Well, he was actually talked out of invading Britain, wasn't he? Well, he, he, what if you, you know, if you, if we go back to, we often think that Nelson

at Trafalgar prevented an invasion, but in fact he'd already given up the invasion plan by then. There was a huge army all along the Channel coast. And he'd built lots of invasion boats, barges and so on. So he was all ready for this and just said, well, okay, I want the French fleet has to come sailing up the channel and escort us over. You know, it's only 20 miles. And then we'll be in London.

And England will be dead, more or less put it. But then the Navy never would. His navy, his Admiral, Villeneuve, said, it's too dangerous. you know, if we try and sail up the channel, we'll get sunk, so we're not going to do it. So Napoleon, you know, sort of peak, says, all right, then, I'm going to go and invade Austria instead. But that was the closest we've ever got to being invaded by the French, probably. They came pretty close on quite a number of occasions in the previous hundred years.

Because the point was made to him, was it not that, okay, you can invade England, and maybe you might even win, but then what? Yes, that's true. Well, one of his generals, Bernadotte, who was pretty shrewd and who later became king of Sweden, so he was one of those who did well out of the whole business. Did say that. He said, if there's an invasion of England, you have to lead it. Because if anybody else leads it, that means they'll be greater than you. So you have to lead it. And if you lead it and it fails, then that's you, you're screwed.

But I think he would have probably given it a try because he was a risk taker. You might say, well, people must have told him not to invade Russia, but he did. He must have been told it was dangerous to invade Egypt, but he did that too. So I think he would have taken the chance. And what do we know about Napoleon? What do we know about his character, who he was? Because there's a lot of mythology that's been written about him and spoken about him. Almost that film, I don't know whether you saw it that came out.

I did. It's not really about Napoleon. It's just big pitch battles. and some as battles. It's a lot of battles. And then it's him on the island sort of keeling over at the end or something, you know. Well, I mean, I didn't like it very much.

No. It sounded as though you did. And for all the reasons you say, but the other thing that annoyed me was that everybody was much too old. Napoleon was, what, if getting on for 50, or late 40s, I think Robespierre was shown as being about 50.

These were all met in their 20s and 30. 30s. Explains their behavior. Yes, partly. Yeah. It's fascinating when we talk about history just to understand how much we don't understand how young people were, you know, the American founders, late 20s, early 30s. Yeah.

These great men who founded a nation, just like kids, basically, by our standards today. Indeed. Wellington was the same age as Napoleon. They were both young. Pitt was young. Robespierre was young. Even Louis XVIth was fairly young, 30 something. But yeah, we kind of tend to think of people as older.

Well, of course, our leaders tend to be fairly young nowadays. But Napoleon as a personality, well, one historian said he was a walking laboratory of neuroses. I mean, he wasn't French. He was Corsican, of course, as we know. His first language was Corsican, a dialect of Italian. Whether he ever really liked France, I wonder. He was set to a French military college at a very young age, because his mother had slept

with the French governor of Corsica, supposedly. And then it turned out that he wasn't really a, he was barely a gentleman in a military college full of aristocrats. I mean, he wasn't very happy there. There's even a story that he was advised he might think of joining the Royal Navy, I mean, our Royal Navy. So I mean, I think probably, I was feeling he regarded the French as a resource to be a resource to be to be used.

When his son, he made his son king of Rome. You know, he wanted to be emperor like the Holy Roman emperor, like Charlemagne. Not a French, not a French ruler, really, a European ruler. So I think, you know, France was, okay, big, rich country, good for his ambitions, but not, I don't feel it was something that he, a country that he felt very strongly, emotionally, the attack. So he wasn't a French nationalist. He was someone who saw France as a vehicle through which to achieve his personal ambitions. And one of the things you tend to find with people who are very, very good at something is they tend to like to do it a lot. Was the reason that

he invaded so many different countries, partly because he was a great general and he loved war and he loved winning? He certainly loved winning. He was a very good planner. I think that's what he was mainly. I don't think he was a, I mean, I'm not an expert on this, but I don't think he was a great battlefield commander in a way that Wellington was, though Wellington was also a very good planner. But you know there's this saying,

amateurs talking about tactics, professionals, talk about logistics. Well, Napoleon was very good at organizing, and at that he was... Was it not him that said an army marches on his stomach? Supposedly, yeah. Yeah. That would come.

of explain that, right? Yes. But yes, I suppose he was something that, that was the solution to his problems. Yes. If you, you know, if you've got a problem, then war is the way to solve it. So in the case of the British, yes, in the case of the Russians, yes, the case of the Spanish invade Spain if they're being awkward. And the assumption is that you will win, and that will be the end of your problems.

And I think there may have been something else, which was that although he called himself emperor and although he he he he ate the style of you know the archaic style of the holy roman empire and he surrounded himself with real aristocrats and he married a hapsburg you couldn't do much better than that i mean he knew he always knew that he was an upstart and i think at least i sort of guess this is a not a hypothesis based on no particular evidence but he there wasn't really a place where he could stop you know he couldn't sort of settle down and say i'll live the rest of my life as as emperor and you know happily hunting and whatever um he couldn't do that i mean he said somewhere you know if i'm not feared then i'm not safe towards that effect so i think that there was not he

didn't know how one of his one of the historians one of the said he didn't know how to stop he didn't know how to make peace and maybe there was no way he could do it because as soon as he looked weak then he would be he would be overthrown you know he couldn't rely on the he couldn't be like the hatsbergs or like the boer was or even like the the had ovarians in britain because he was only over there as a in a sense as an expedient so he he wants his son to succeed never did his nephew did it shows that he did have there was a dynastic you know there was a lot of support for a napoleon But I think he could never be sure that he would survive Peace and what would you do with the army?

You know, as long as there's a war you can always have the army somewhere else and they can be paid for by others What happens when the war ends? We know it made it did destabilize France and It was a war that ultimately defeated him and of course we can talk about the Battle of Waterloo which I'm sure we will do But it was also his invasion of Portugal wasn't it? Yeah, that was his ultimate undoing really That was the beginning of the end. Well, what he called the Spanish Alsa. He invades Portugal and he invades Spain.

And they, well, I think this is true. At least I've written it, so I'm hoping it's true. The French lost as many men in Spain as they did in Russia. What? Over a longer period, of course. Really? Yeah. Like half a million men or something like that?

Something like that. Wow. because, of course, most of the men they lost in Russia were not French, or at least very many of them were. They were Poles, Germans, Italians and so on. You know, it was an international army. In Spain, it was largely French. And, you know, they were fighting a very bloody and nasty guerrilla war with the Spanish, as well as fighting Wellington, and sort of was popping out of Portugal, to fight a few battles, then popping back again. And it was a drain on their strength. I'm going to be honest with you.

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And one of the interesting things in terms of the mythology for our generation and perhaps younger people as well who've not studied history thoroughly, as most of us haven't, partly because of the way history is taught nowadays, is you come away with this sort of, there's this popular idea of the French as this sort of cheese-eating surrender monkeys. This is the kind of phrase that stuck sticks in people's. But of course people don't realize that by the time of the beginning of World War II, the French had been the people who'd had one of the most powerful armies in the world consecutively for several wars. Yes. And what happened in 1939 was a colossal shock to everybody, not just others, but the French themselves. Yes, yes. Yeah, I mean, this idea which I think many people do have who have a superficial knowledge, which is the French didn't fight. in 1939, 1940, it is not true. They did fight, and they had large casualties, much larger than

Britain did. And of course, the resistance continued to resist and so on. But, yeah, I mean, France was a military nation, and you can still sort of see that to some extent on the 14th of July or the 11th of November when they have parades down the Champs-Aid-isa. You can see that a bit like us. We like the idea of a military pomp and all that you might say well we've both allowed us to be rather hollowed up because we don't want to spend the money on it but but no you know wellington and so on would never have thought of the French as a as as a non-military nation in fact they would have thought of them as above all an aggressive military nation and that's why British politicians were so scared of the French

for so long right up until the end of the 19th century they're afraid of France invading. One reason why we didn't build a channel tunnel. And I was told by a director of the channel tunnel company that it was technically feasible to have built a channel tunnel in the 1880s, was that the war, the war ministry in Britain said we can't risk the French invading through a tunnel. Or frankly, probably a good decision given that the Germans could have invaded through that tunnel a few decades later. I was curious about why. I was curious about why, you know, it was that this great military nation of France was so vulnerable to the German invasion in 1940, that's right now, 1930. Because, I mean, there are a few different things. One is the Germans

had come up with, you know, they used the radio very well, they used tanks very well, they used mobile war maneuver very well. But another thing that I understand is French society was very demoralized by the internal battle between the communists and the fascists within France. Is that fair assessment as well? France was more divided politically than Britain was. That's true. They're probably not more divided than Germany was. I remember the great German historian Sir Richard Evans saying that something like,

if you think France was demoralized in 1939, you should have seen Germany. Hitler's power was very, was fragile in 1939. And it was only because they defeated France that Hitler suddenly becomes the invulnerable great national genius and so on. And, you know, the army would have kicked Hitler out, had there been any reverse. And Hitler, I think, knew that. But what about the French? Well, I think there was some demoralization. I think there had been a feeling ever since the First World War that France could not go through that again.

You know, the French had had twice the losses that we had. had in the First World War. And it was demoralizing enough for Britain. You know, the huge peace movements, a lot of pacifists, a determination to appease Germany in order to avoid another war. And therefore, for many people, a kind of terrible acceptance to say, well, we knew this was going to be a disaster, and now it's a disaster. So therefore, we have to stop fighting. I mean, there were plenty of people in Britain who would have said that too. Had it not been for Churchill, probably what we would have done. But I think it was also that the Allies and indeed the Germans were preparing for a repeat of the First World War.

One of my colleagues once told me which I was surprised at. It's always stuck in my mind. The Germans were using more steel for making barbed wire in 1939 than they were for making tanks. because almost everybody was expecting a repeat of trench warfare. And that's what the French were doing. That's what we were doing. So they were spread, the army was spread along this line from Holland down to the Maginot line. And the Germans decided, the German army, not Hitler,

decided that if there was going to be a repeat of the First World War, it would also be a repeat of German defeat. And therefore, they had to do something that would come. cut this war short. And that was the so-called Blitzkrieg, which was an improvisation. I mean, they'd almost done it in 1918. So you might think, well, shouldn't people have expected the same thing again? But they didn't. But, you know, the German breakthrough in March 1818 had almost broken the Allied line, had almost forced the British to do a Dunkirk in 1918. And in 1939 or 1940, as you say, they had better tanks, they had radios, they had all that.

Whereas the French, who had the best tanks in the world, relied on flags to communicate between them. It wasn't a terribly good idea. But radios often didn't work anyway. But the Germans concentrated their forces in one place. So one French general said, you know, we had 500 groups of three tanks. the Germans had one group of 500 tanks. And so they punched through the line where no one was expecting it, where they thought it was impossible, you know, through the Ardennes forest. Tanks can't go through the trees. So we all know that they can't attack there. So they ignored all

the warning signs and that's where they did attack. And the Allies, who could have perhaps bombed them, didn't too late. And then they never recovered. So the French fought, the British fought, but they were always fighting and losing battle and and then as you say there were plenty of people in France who said we should never have started this war You know the real enemy are the communists not the fascists with there in fact we quite like them So what we have to do is to do a deal with Hitler and that of course is what What happened and had it not been for de Gaulle and Churchill? Perhaps that's how the whole thing would have ended well it's one of the things I mentioned about the communists and the fascist. I mean, people don't realize how many fascists there were across Europe in the 1930s,

not just in Germany, in France, in southern Europe, in Eastern Europe, all over the place. I mean, the factoid I always like about this is, I think one of the last divisions defending the Reichstag was SS Charlemagne, which was full of French Nazis. Was it really? Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that. And it's interesting to me. One question that we've never really talked about in the show, which I think would be interesting in the context of France and World War II is, what do you think was the impact of the French resistance on World War II? How significant was it? How damaging was it to the Germans? Not very except in the sense that it made the Allied invasion less bloody.

So the French resistance was able to do a lot of damage in 1944 to German communications. To facilitate D-Day. Yes, facilitated D-Day and what happened after D-Day, and also the invasion of Provence as well. So the Mackey had been armed mainly by the British, and they were and organised, and were ready to come out into the open. So, you know, what they'd been doing before then was good for French morale and perhaps bad for German morale,

I don't know, probably didn't make all that much difference, but, you know, producing underground newspe. papers, having radio broadcasts, all that helps to keep spirits up. But as somebody said, it doesn't actually kill any Germans. And so what really counted, I think, was the mobilisation in 1944. And therefore, it saved a lot of allied lives. And it almost certainly shortened the war a bit. But I don't think you could say it was a major element in the war. But what it certainly did do was to to help France to see itself and be seen by others as still a great power. And one of the victors, you know, Churchill was very keen on that too.

So France gets a permanent seat in the United Nations and has an occupation zone in Germany and so on. So there's this desire to remake France as a great power as an ally of Britain. And the resistance made that seem plausible. I think that was the important thing. And of course, it later on brings up to Goal to come back and save France from the possibility of another civil war over Algeria. And I think DeGle was the, you know, evidently was the great figure of 20th century France. And the resistance was, as I think he probably saw it,

was really a vehicle for him to be the savior of the nation. And people often talk about Vichy France. Yes. What was Vichy France? And was it essentially, it was essentially a Nazi state. But how much support for the Nazis was there? Quite a lot. Because Marshal Petin, who is the great French hero of the First World War, or one of them,

is one of those who think we have to do a deal with Germany. We've lost. And the patriotic thing is to make the best of your defeat. As I said, there were plenty of people in Britain who thought, same. So you can imagine, you can sort of imagine, if you wanted to write a sort of historical novel about this, you could imagine the Duke of Windsor coming back as a puppet monarch with David Lloyd George as collaborating Prime Minister in Churchill in exile in Canada or somewhere. And what the French had, therefore, was a war hero telling them that they had fought bravely,

but they'd lost, and that what they had to do was to make the best of their situation. Reform the nation. That was where the fascists came in. It was reformed the nation meant hammering the left, anti-Semitism and discipline, sort of boy scout sort of stuff. And the church, much of the Catholic Church was very keen on this too. It was indeed a consciously counter-revolutionary movement. They didn't have a monarch, but they had Marshall Peta, who was the next best thing.

And a lot of them were people who were monarchists, who would have liked to have a monarch in France, and who thought that it had all gone wrong in 1789. That's when France had started to go to the dogs, and they were going to put France back on the path it should have been on, and they never had a revolution. And if Hitler would help them to do that, then that was fine. So there were fascists, but they weren't all fascists. Many of them were old-fashioned reactionary patriots.

Of course, some of the old-fashioned reactionary patriots were in the resistance, too. So it was often a, you know, it was a choice you had to make. If you hated the Germans enough, you would go into the resistance. If you didn't terribly hate the Germans, you might end up on the side of Fishi. and quite a number of people went from one side to the other, including Francois Mitterrand, as you may know. He was a, although he ended up socialist president, he had been on the far right in his youth. He was decorated by Marshall Pettin.

He was a junior minister, I think, or at least had some sort of official position in Vichy. And then when he realized, you know, honorably, if you like, that they were going to lose, he got in touch with de Gaulle and said, obviously you're the man, I want to do, I want to serve you now. And, you know, I'm putting it in a rather sarcastic way and you're smiling. But it was possible to make that decision in a perfectly honourable way. You could say, I trusted Petin, and now I realised that that was not the right way to go. And so I'm going to join the resistance. And plenty of people did that.

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And what was that watershed moment where people realise, hang on, maybe it's not a good idea to be pro-Vichy? Yeah, well, I think there were probably a number. I mean, the first thing was when Britain fought on. because the Vichy view was Britain would surrender. You know, we had to surrender first, if you like, because otherwise the British would surrender,

and they would be the ones doing the deal with Germany. On our backs, that was a widespread view. You know, they burnt Joan of Arc, they'll screw us again. So the British didn't surrender. Oh, that's awkward. And then, of course, when the Americans come into the war, you start thinking, oh, well, are the Germans really going to win after all and then when the german attack on russia gets bogged down you think well after all things

is not going terribly well for the germans and then in in in in in two the germans invaded unoccupied france and so in that case you think well so what what was the point of this at all okay for most people it's a way you just have to carry on with your life you know not many people are heroes but you know some people do say well this is where we really have to take a stand. And you do find people joining the resistance. Because also there was a specter of Waterloo, wasn't there? I mean, they were still quite sore that, you know, they got their asses handed to them.

Yes, they were. And they were also quite sore about Dunkirk. Because, you know, here we are. This is the British once again leaving us in the lurch. So, I mean, one French trope, if you like, is the British leave you in the lurch. You know what? Ungrateful bastards. What are we supposed to stand to the last man at Dunkirk?

Just because they got their asses handed to them. It's typical, is all I'm going to say. Well, funnily enough, well, I say funnily, not really funny. But one reason why the French said their best troops in 1939 up into Belgium, which was the wrong thing to do, as we know, because the Germans are going to attack in a different place, was because they were afraid the British would do a runner. So the commander-in-chief of the French army says,

okay, we're going to send our best troops there because we know what the British nearly did in 1980. They nearly ran away then, so they'll run away again. So we have to send our best troops to make sure the British don't run away. But they did, of course, the British did, as the French saw it, they did run away. They ran away at Dunkirk.

The French were heroically holding off the Germans while the British were, were getting on their boats. There's a famous Vichy cartoon that shows a British officer punching a French soldier in the face at Dunkirk to keep him off the boats. It's the British who are getting on the boats, not the French.

Of course, that wasn't true. And of course, Brexit, for some people, is another way in which the British let the French down. You know what? During the interview, you almost brought me to the point of having sympathy for the French, but I think that is rapidly evaporated

in the last two minutes well don't well if dunkirk the british army might well not have escaped at dunkirk had the french not in fact sacrificed themselves in holding off the germans and i think so you could imagine why many french soldiers and politicians thought well we did our bit and the british didn't and the thing one of the things that really annoyed them well annoyed is is not as is that they saw the britishers refusing to commit the r a f to the battle in France. And that, in a sense, is true, though it would have been no good. Well, Churchill knew, though, Churchill knew that France was lost,

and we were going to, he knew Britain had to defend our island. He was told that by the chief of the chief, you know, the commanders of the RAF. They said, if you send the RAF to France, we're going to lose it, and we'll lose the war. But, I mean, quite a lot of the RAF was sent to France. And after Dunkirk, more troops were sent to France and then had to be. withdrawn again. But if you were French, if you were a Frenchman who let's say had a few doubts about the British alliance, if you did remember Joan of Arc or all the other stuff, Waterloo, and then, you'd say we knew we couldn't trust the British. They're willing to fight

to the last Frenchman, just as they were in the First World War. We're not going to do that this time. We're not going to be the mugs this time. We're not going to get our sons killed for the sake of British prophets or the British Empire. We're going to, we're going to do the sensible thing and make peace with the Germans who are after all that bad, not as bad as the British anyway, because at least the Germans are honorable. You know, this is not my view, of course. I'm speaking of it as a wishi, as a patriotic, you know, the Germans are not, because at least the Germans fight fair, whereas the British are all...

Well, actually, the history of World War II doesn't quite bear that statement out. You don't forget we're back in 1939, 1940, quite, quite, quite. That's really interesting. I suppose the interesting question, moving back to the present age, is to what extent that Vichy resistance split informs French politics to this day? I mean, you mentioned Mitterrand. I imagine there are hundreds of people, sort of in a political level, but millions of people further down whose views and ideologies come from that to inform their views today.

Today, a bit rather less. I mean, we shall see this in a sense at the next presidential election, because the thing that has held back the Le Pen family business, which is the, you know, the Front National, the Rally Mont Nacional, is its association with Vichy for many people in France. So, I mean, my wife, my co-author, would say, you know, I would never vote for Le Pen. And if I say, well, why, you know, she seems all right, because, you know, what her father was, who these people were. These were the people who collaborated. These are the Vichy people, or their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren. And the French have long historical memories.

So I think it does still, so we shall see if Le Pen becomes president, it will show that the younger generation, which is to say, really, anybody under 40, under 50, no longer thinks of the Second World War as the defining experience. The people for whom it was the defining experience, of course are largely no longer with us. You know, the people who remember it or who remember their parents remembering it. They're all, they're going. So, I mean, younger people are supposed to be much more willing to support Le Pen than older people. And to what extent is your wife's concern understandable instinctively but inaccurate factually?

And to what extent is it factual? You know, being someone's granddaughter doesn't mean, or daughter doesn't mean you have their view. I've got very few different views to my parents. When I first went to France, it was now a long time ago, it was still a very clear thing. You know, I had friends who, you know, I had a friend whose aunt had had a fallen in love with a German airman. And after the war, she'd had to leave Paris. Didn't come back for 20 years. And they all knew that.

The neighbors knew that. And so this was a very present memory. Of course, all that's long gone. But nevertheless, there still are, you know, there are family traditions. There are, one is Catholicism. So Catholicists, Catholics tended to be conservative, and the Catholic Church tended to support Fishi. Because of hatred of communism, of atheism,

what they saw as, you know, the whole revolutionary tradition, which was anti-Christian. That was a big divide at least until the 1970s. I mean, I think, you know, you could, I used to show my students a map of French election results in the 1970s compared with a map of support for the French Revolution in the 1790s. And they were almost exactly the same. So you could say, you know, for a very, very long time, there were political cultures which affected whole regions. I think that's really largely gone, as it has here, really.

But the next election will show it one way or the other. I guess what I'm asking, Robert, sorry, is... something slightly different, which is, it's not that you're going on too much. I just want to dig into this thing, because here in Britain and elsewhere around the world, you know, we don't, most of us don't understand what's happening in other countries. We just get given this, like, slogan in the newspaper and we go, oh, that's what that is, and we don't know. Yeah. Is it fair to say that the Front Nationale is the ideological descendant of Vichy France? ideological. I don't mean lineage. It's true. Biologically, I mean ideologically. Are these the people who would collaborate with fascists today if France was invaded? That's kind of what I'm getting at. That's a very good question. There is certainly, there is that element, certainly, yeah, which is one that is visible and active in French politics in the way that it's really,

the British equivalent is really very, very marginal, at least it was until recently. So there is that element. There's also a traditional Catholic element. But for a lot of people now, it's, as in most, let's say most countries, it's a question of who you think will be the best government. I mean, a lot of it's now a sort of visceral dislike of Macon,

which is odd, in a way. You know, he's a rather annoying chap, I think. for many people, but he's not, he's kind of politically not very definable. You know, he's kind of, he's kind of colorless politically. He's not right wing or left wing. He's not, of course, the center. Yet, many people in France seem to absolutely loathe back all. It's like their Kirstama.

A bit like Kiyosthama. Yeah, but I understand why people would hate someone like that, because they see them as presiding over the continued decline of the country without having any of their own views or implementing policies. The reason I'm getting into this, Rob, is, It's just very interesting. If you look at the right-wing populist parties elsewhere, say in Britain, right? Nigel Farage is clearly ideologically the descendant of the people who would fight the fascists. Yes.

Clearly, right? Marine Le Pen, ideologically, is the descendant of who? Well, I think you'd have to say that it... The French often talk about political families, which is a odd idea. it's partly because French political parties are very fluid and they're constantly changing their names and so on. But there's this idea that there are political families. And if there is a political family to which Le Pen belongs,

apart from her own, the Le Pen family, it does include the people who would have collaborated, largely because of their visceral hatred of communism. Okay, you might say, well, is that still there? No, not necessarily. but I mean simply because the communist menace is no longer there but they're the people who who tend to see the solution to problems as you know authoritarian government who who blame a lot of problems on immigrants okay well a lot of us do not all problems but

some problems but you know there's a spectrum of between people who say well I I don't really like to see people publicly praying in the street in Paris. People are Muslims? Muslims. I don't like to see, yeah. I don't like to see Muslims publicly playing in Paris. But otherwise, you know, I've got Muslim friends and neighbors, I don't mind. And then there are the people who say, these people are the enemies of France.

They should all be expelled or, you know, whatever. There's a whole, as we know, there's a whole spectrum. And a lot of that spectrum all will support Marine Le Pen. It's not only about migration, it's also about obviously things like taxation. It's also, as you say, this sense that the country is on the slide and we need somebody. The Farage phenomenon is in some way similar. We need somebody who will break the rules if necessary and get things done. The French don't talk about the blob, but there's the same sense that of a stage.

that doesn't work. I think in a way that Le Pen and her party have tried to normalize themselves. It's not clear how, whether that will work or not. If it does, then you might see this, the same sort of thing that you see with Maloney in Italy. In other words, that someone who comes to power being accused of being a neo-fascist and then turns out not to be very different from any any central right politician. So it may be that, that Le Pen will get elected and will turn out to be not very different from any centre-right politician. The thing that worries me is rather different. I mean, my wife, I think, would be viscerally resistant to an ethel. How many people in France feel the same? And if Le Pen is elected,

to what extent will there be violence in the streets, would there be strikes, would there be resistance from within the civil service and so on, I think probably to quite a large extent. That just sounds like France now, Robert. France all the time. But much worse. But much worse. And, you know, we are both in the early 40s, but I think my entire adult life people have been predicting that Le Pen of one form of another is going to be elected.

It hasn't happened so far. No. Do you expect that it will at the next election? I honestly don't know because as I say I think it depends on how people at the very last minute decide to vote in the second round whether they're going to say well I don't like a lot of this right-wing stuff but I certainly don't want the left it also depends on who the other candidate is if it's if it comes down to a fight between Le Pen and Melancho then Melanchon is a communist sort of I mean he's sort of

Jeremy Corbyn multiplied by Tem. By, I think I was right when I said communist based on that description. I mean, you know. He's a democratic socialist, as they call it. Yes, exactly. Yes, a communist. What worries me a bit about France and about Britain, and both two countries which I feel a strong attachment,

is that they're both heading the same direction towards a polarization of politics between, okay, a right-wing, coalition which may to, which is almost certainly going to disappoint its followers, and the possibility of a left-wing coalition, in our case, Greens, nationalists, Lib Dem's, Labour, who will cause chaos. And in the French case, you could have a Melanchon-led coalition of the left against Le Pen, with stop Le Pen as its slogan. And I think in that case, you're heading for into very dangerous waters. The thing, you know, we've been talking about history

and how history reflects on the present. But in an odd way, the histories of France and Britain are so different. And yet we're facing the same sort of political, we seem to be facing the same sort of political future in which the centre is collapsing and polarisation is taking place. But with the polarisation, the polarisation.

polarized parties, not at all, let's say, unable to create a sense that they would be capable of tackling the country's problems in both France and Britain. And so what you get, what you might get is in fact a succession of weak and constantly changing governments, sort of cobbled together centrist relying sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, which we've had in France, ever since McAllen came to power, really. Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on, absolutely fascinating. What it's done is confirmed all our prejudices about the French.

So thank you very much. Thank you very much. It's giving me a basis for my prejudice. But the final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Before Robert answers the final question at the end of the interview, make sure you go to triggerpod.com.uker.

Where he will be able to see this. Why doesn't there seem to be more anger from England towards France for the steady stream of small boats that France lets through? What are specific cultural traits of French peoples that distinguish them from their Anglo-Saxon and other counterparts? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? Oh gosh. Well, I think we're talking about it a bit, but I've always been a bit suspicious a bit, suspicious of rewilding, meaning letting everything letting everything go, letting everything go to pot, not looking after land, not looking after anything, and saying, oh, well, this is rewiring, it's just letting all the weeds and the brambles grow. And I think that's what's, I think it's being accepted that that's one of the things that's causing a lot of the, or at least enabling a lot of these fires to spread, that people are not control.

We have to manage, I think we have to manage the place where we live, we have to manage the countryside. And to just say, well, we're going to let it go back to nature. It's a recipe, as I think we've seen, for a lot of disaster. It's the same in every country that it's been done, I think. There we go. Robert, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much. Make sure to join us over on Substack, where you get to ask Robert your questions. Professor Tooms is still a support of the Conservative Party.

How does she square that with their failure, often deliberate? Patrick inserts, to make anything meaningful out of Brexit.