A Brief History of France, Revised and Updated

Cecil Jenkins was educated at Trinity College Dublin before becoming a French Government research scholar at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. He has taught modern French literature and society at the universities of Exeter, British Columbia and Sussex, where he also served as Dean of the School of European Studies. While he has published in other fields, his writings on France include books on the Nobel Prizewinning novelist François Mauriac and the novelist, art historian and De Gaulle's Minister for Culture André Malraux.

In this broad and ambitious drama of two millennia, the characterization of the major players brings pungency and colour to every event. From Capetian kings to Republican presidents, from anonymous cave artists to celebrated writers and intellectuals of recent times it is the personality of politics and the politics of personality which make this book a particular pleasure to recommend for any voyage of discovery of the French past and present.