pumpkinstrokemarrow

Talking of which, while Amazon France, Amazon UK and Amazon USA might have a common login, so my one login and details does for all three, but they do not have common advertising. So the French are much more energetic about telling me about offers than the English and the Americans don't bother at all. Today's email from France reads: 'JAMES R TOLLER : risque d'avalanche de bonnes affaires !'. Perhaps the difference is that I use the UK a lot, so probably am not going to use it any more; hardly use the USA at all, so not worth their bother to bother me; whereas, I am an occasional user of France and so it might be worth their while to see if they can push me to a few more purchases. And I have to say, I did actually buy the winner of this year's Goncourt on the basis of one of their fliers. Not arrived yet, but there is clearly some method in what they do. I also notice that for some purposes, Amazon appears to operate out of Luxembourg - presumably another corporation tax haven along with the likes of Ireland. Does Amazon get away with paying as little tax in the UK as Microsoft does?

Back with Fenby, he makes no assumptions at all about one's knowledge of French and in many places prints some French word or phrase in italics, followed by an English translation in plain type in brackets. I find this slightly irritating and would have preferred translations, if present at all, relegated to footnotes. And while the book is generally decently printed, they have been careless with the rather too narrow and rather too variable outer margins. Irritated by the appearance of the page. Simon & Schuster effort.

Book itself interesting, not having known more about de Gaulle than one picks up from newspapers. I have now got to the liberation, that is to say about two fifths of the way through the 600 odd pages of text. On the plus side, a brave, decent family man who did not put his nose in the trough. A wow with French crowds. A real figure head. And despite his army background and dictatorial style, he knew that once the war was ended there was going to have to be some real change. Which there was. And he knew that the many resistance para-military groups had to be closed down, more or less forthwith. Which they were.

On the minus side, stubborn and touchy. Churchy. Very difficult man to work with - with the difficulty extending to many of his French colleagues. For a minor general from a country which had been thoroughly whopped by the Germans, he took a very high line about the honour and glory of France, seemingly forgetting that he was our pensioner. On numerous occasions during the war both Churchill and Roosevelt dreamed of ways of getting rid of him. But never quite realising their dreams.

Various factlets along the way. 1) France was a complete mess politically before the war. With plenty of right wing anti-semitism. Fair amount of free-mason knocking as well. On the road to a Spanish style disintegration? 2) Despite hexagonal France being knocked out, de Gaulle was able to draw significant resources from the overseas France - with most of which the Germans did not have the time or resources to bother. 3) The Germans were gobbling up around 30% of French GDP by the end of the war - a contribution which represented nearly 10% of their GDP. A lot of co-operation of one form or another. 4) Partly for this reason, French infrastructure was far more bashed about in the second war than it was in the first war. And by the sound of it, a lot more than ours was. 5) Despite being obsessed with the French liberating Paris, de Gaulle was reduced to asking the Americans for troops to help to restore order in liberated Paris. French troops not up to the job - or perhaps they were too busy partying and settling scores. There being a fair amount of this last. Nasty business. He didn't get the troops.