That sweet enemy : the French and the British from the Sun King to the present

From Blenheim and Waterloo to 'Up Yours, Delors' and 'Hop Off You Frogs', the cross-Channel relationship has been one of rivalry, misapprehension and even of loathing.

But it has also been a relationship of envy, admiration and even affection.

While open warfare between the two was a constant occurrence, anglophilia and francophilia have long histories. And in the last two centuries, while France and Britain have spent much of that time as allies, that alliance has been almost as uneasy, as competitive and as ambivalent as the generations of warfare.

Their rivalry, for good and ill, has shaped the modern world, from North America to the Middle East and SE Asia, and it is still shaping Europe today.

Robert and Isabelle Tombs' magisterial book, by turns provocative and delightful, tells the rich and complex story of the relationship over three centuries, from the reign of Louis XIV to the second Iraq War and the latest expansion of the EU.

A story of wars and alliances, but also of food, fashion, sport, literature, sex and music. "That Sweet Enemy" brings both British humour and Gallic panache to the story of the two countries, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, in triumph and in defeat, in dominance and in decline.

The result is a triumph.