Cross Channel Currents

Cross Channel Currents explores the understandings and misunderstandings that make up the Entente Cordiale - the hundred-year relationship between Britain and France, as well as the everyday common interests and shared pleasures that give it substance. Contributors include the late Roy Jenkins, in a witty and personal view of Winston Churchill's relationship with France; Pierre Messmer, a companion of Charles de Gaulle during World War II and later his prime minister; former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who remembers the historic meeting of Edward Heath and Georges Pompidou; Hubert Vedrine, a former French foreign minister, on the difficulties of cross-Channel relations; and their successors Dominique de Villepin and Jack Straw.

Douglas Johnson is professor emeritus of French history, University of London. Richard Mayne is a writer and broadcaster. He was personal assistant to Jean Monnet, a senior official of the European Commission, and for six years its UK representative. Robert Tombs is a reader in French history at the University of Cambridge, and the author of France 1814-1914 (1996).

1. How the Entente Cordiale Began 2. The Entente and Germany 3. World War I: 1914-1918 4. Between the Wars 5. World War II: 1939-1945 6. The End of Empire: 1945-1997 7. France, Britain and Europe 8. The End of the Cold War: Mitterand and Thatcher 9. The Entente and America 10. The Entente and the Arts 11. The Narrowing Channel: The Entente Today 12. France and Britain in Tomorrow's Europe