Allan Massie
THE OLD QUARREL
That Sweet Enemy
By Robert and Isabelle Tombs (Heinemann 624pp £25)

The English and the French have enjoyed a love-hate relationship for centuries. I say 'the English' because the Scots stand rather apart, or betwixt and between. Individual Scots - notably, as Robert and Isabelle Tombs remark, Adam Smith - have helped form a British mindset which the French find repugnant; yet Scots retain fond memories of the Auld Alliance and still speak of England as 'the auld enemy' - no sweetness there. Moreover, by a decree of Louis XII, never rescinded, Scots resident in France were to be regarded as French nationals. In August 1944 Colette, most French of all French writers, told her husband she would not believe in the liberation of Paris till he brought her a Scottish officer. 'In a kilt?' 'Certainly in a kilt.' He produced a major from a Highland regiment, who stayed to lunch. 'My wife reads a lot,' he said, 'I expect she'll have heard of you.' This is by the by. It must be admitted, however, that the French usually speak of 'Angleterre' and 'les Anglais', rather than of Britain and the British.

I have long thought that the reason for the uneasy relationship between the French and the English is that neither group feels absolutely certain of its superiority to the other, while both feel comfortably superior to Americans, Germans, Spaniards and everybody else. Nothing in this full, rich and utterly engrossing book persuades me to alter this opinion. Robert and Isabelle Tombs are husband and wife. He is English and Reader in French History at St John's College, Cambridge; she is French and teaches our diplomats to speak and write her native tongue. That she does so is evidence - sad evidence, her compatriots might say - of the global dominance of English. It's not so long since you couldn't pass the Foreign Office exam without perfect French.

The book is subtitled: 'The French and the British from the Sun King to the Present'. The authors might of course have begun earlier, with the Hundred Years War, or indeed the Norman conquest of England. But Louis XIV isn't a bad starting point, for it was in his reign that France became the dominant power on the Continent.

Their first sentence is challenging. 'On Guy Fawkes Day, 1688, Europe invaded England, in the shape of 20,000 Dutch, German, Danish, French, Swedish, Finnish (in bearskins), Polish, Greek and Swiss troops.' They continue: 'The invaders' aim was to pull the Three Kingdoms of England, Ireland and Scotland into a European struggle to stem the growing dominance of France.' This is an accurate statement, though one that turns the Whig interpretation of our 'Glorious Revolution' upside down. Macaulay - who knew, with that utter certainty characteristic of him, that William of Orange had been invited to these islands 'to preserve the liberties of England' - may be spinning in his grave. Actually, of course, both versions are correct. The Tombses might, however, have remarked that William's army also contained Scots and English regiments.

From 1688 to 1815 war was intermittent - the authors call it the second Hundred Years War, fairly enough. The nature of these wars says much about the differences between the two states. France was a continental power with global interests and ambitions; Britain the reverse. Our continental interest was restricted to preventing any single power - and France was the only candidate - from dominating Europe. Consequently we preferred to pay allies to fight France there, and there were few British military successes on the Continent between the Marlborough wars and Wellington's laborious Peninsular Campaign - Minden (1759) was an exception.

Political and military rivalry throughout the eighteenth century didn't prevent cultural exchanges in which the desire to emulate and the eagerness to disparage were evident either side of the Channel. 'If one could sum up a vast range of language and imagery, it would be that the British either admired or laughed at the French and the French either envied or sneered at the British.'

The Enlightenment flourished in both countries. Adam Smith drew on French thought, and benefited from his discussions and arguments with the Physiocrats. 'He also concluded from his French observations that economic enterprise could survive even incompetent government.' Yet the Tombses quote the historian Claude Nicolet's remark that 'Smith's ideas and those of the Scottish Enlightenment generally, 'the birth-certificate of modernity', have not taken root in French culture.' 'It was', they say, 'the French Revolution that repudiated the modern emphasis on individual liberty in favour of an idealized vision of the citizenship of the ancient world. Republicans condemned Britain ('Carthage') as a selfish commercial society, and praised France ('Rome') for upholding nobler values. Two centuries later this arguably still marks France off from the Anglophone world. French rejection of the European Constitution in 2005 was in large part a continuation of 'the old quarrel between the heirs of Colbert and of Adam Smith'.' This theme is explored at length and with great subtlety and intelligence in the last chapters of the book, which deal with Franco-British relations after 1945. These chapters offer a model of lucid and dispassionate exposition, and should be read by politicians, journalists and political scientists in both countries; also by any citizens who want to come to a better understanding of the history of the European Union to date.

In the twentieth century Britain and France were allies, reluctant often, distrustful almost always, yet bound together by a common interest: the need to check German expansion. The Tombses are very good on both wars, especially the Second, and on the sorry history of appeasement. In dealing with this subject they are more severe in their judgement of Britain than of France, and perhaps underplay the reluctance of Third Republic politicians to look reality in the face.

As for 1940, subject of myths and misunderstanding, they are even-handed and judicious. 'If defeat were proof of nation decadence, it would apply not only to France, but to Britain also. Its contribution to the Alliance was shamefully feeble.' Few in Britain have ever acknowledged how much the miracle of Dunkirk owed to the continued resistance of the French army. 'French troops fighting from house to house in Lille held seven German divisions away from Dunkirk for four vital days until June 1.' Even a few days later, 'British liaison officers and the Germans reported rising French morale and strengthening resistance, as they fought to hold the Somme and the Aisne. This was the great battle of 1940, largely forgotten in France, and never heard of in England.' 1940 was a closer-run thing than the common opinion has it, the battle of France being lost principally on account of the misinterpretation of intelligence.

The Tombses are very good on Churchill and de Gaulle, harsh on Vichy, not, somewhat uncharacteristically (for they are generally so fair), confronting the question: what do you do when you have lost a war? Laval, believing Germany would win the war, saw France's future in a European union, a continental alliance with Germany. Laval who had, as President Mitterrand observed, never before believed in anything, came to believe in 'ce grand reve geopolitique. Comme quoi, croire, ca l'a perdu.'

This huge book is rich in detail. Space forbids me to dwell on its fascinating examination of social and cultural exchange. I would urge anyone interested in France to buy it. And the story of course continues. What happens next, after the rejection of the European constitution, when the French 'began to suspect that Europe might not after all be their offspring'? And what of Britain, posturing as the indispensable ally of the USA when we are only its lackey? What of future relations? 'The irony is that cherished ambitions could be served if Britain and France acted together, but they could only act together by giving up cherished ambitions.'