Jonathan Fenby

Bestselling historian and political commentator, Jonathan Fenby, is one of the most perceptive of all modern writers on France.

Here he takes you on a compelling journey through the tumultuous two hundred years that followed the defeat at Waterloo.

This was a period that saw France regain and lose an Empire, suffer further revolutions and further catastrophic military defeats, before her re-emergence as the would-be leader of the European project.

At the same time France would experience enormous social change, leading the nation to fundamentally question what it stood for soul-searching that still resonates today, in the face of Islamic extremism.

Jonathan Fenby is a former Editor of the Observer and of the South China Morning Post. He was awarded the Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur for his contribution to understanding between Britain and France.