Quotes from Stephen Clarke

heard how badly I mangled French. Even if it was no good for my education, I was delighted to find that

Orsini and one of his fellow conspirators were guillotined, and an accomplice called Carlo di Rudio was transported to Devil's Island, the notorious French prison camp in French Guiana. He escaped and later fought alongside General Custer at Little Big Horn. True to form, he survived.

King Edward was married to the daughter of one of the warring Anglo-Saxon earls, but he had taken a vow of chastity, and he had no direct heir.

Tanacharison (who could relate to the cow because he claimed that the French had boiled and eaten his father)

There is a class of tourists who never seem to see the things they're visiting, I thought. They prefer to look at directions to the next place they're not going to look at.

Harold didn't need to hire expensive lawyers to dream up a credible defence, though – what hostage is going to refuse to take an oath to a man who is holding him hostage? And what jurisdiction did this Norman foreigner have in England?

Someone who would tax them half to death but who might just keep them alive long enough to pay the taxes – a lot like modern governments, in fact.

Forgetting the existence of Celts, African-Americans and many other branches of the Anglophone world, the French will blame 'les Anglo-Saxons' for whatever is irking them.fn8

The Frenchmen tried to explain that sexual intercourse between males was taboo (despite anything the Brits might have told them about French sailors)

But at the same time, any mention of the history of Quebec rouses burning anti-British and anti-American outrage in a French person's heart, as if someone was talking about a favourite café of theirs that had been turned into a Starbucks. Canada

This is of course the Prince of Wales's motto to this day, though subsequent princes have not adopted John of Bohemia's custom of fighting while tied up and blind.

The prospect of one day being hauled out of the canal by yet another old enemy was hard for France to swallow, even more so when British and French defence specialists discussed their exit strategy in case of an overwhelming Soviet attack, and the Brits proposed a massive evacuation via Dunkirk.