France

The food writer and journalist says it was a Pole, Edouard de Pomiane, who taught the French housewife how to cook.

The historian tells us how French condescension towards America goes back to the 18th century, but more recent antagonisms can be traced to the Second World War

The author and historian Richard Wolin explains that French people in the late 1960s were desperate for a utopian political alternative.

Hazareesingh's book choices include de Gaulle’s "very readable" war diaries. In books of condolences after the leader's death, people wrote things like, "Goodbye Charles, you were greater than Napoleon"

The historian and author chooses five books on de Gaulle and the Resistance. He says the British tried to veto de Gaulle’s famous 1940 speech from London calling on the French to stand up to German occupation

Using examples that range from vaudeville plays to secret societies, Josefowicz paints a colourful picture of the period when, inspired by Napoleon, the French were whipped into an Egyptian frenzy

Author and founder of Virago Press decries the absolute silence of the church during the Holocaust, and discusses five books on the "dark and murky side" the French have now "faced up to"