Robb credits the bicycle, however, for the real revolution in France, noting the popular figures showing how the height of the population increased by several centimetres as a result of the reduction in the number of marriages between blood relatives. Before the First World War there was officially one for every ten people. (But since these were taxed, there were probably a lot more unofficial ones.) So change was coming, fast, and Robb notes that with it arrived nostalgia for a past that never really was. One of the most successful books of 1913 was Alain-Fournier’s novel Le Grand Meaulnes (translated as The Lost Domain and The End of Youth), which spoke of a simple, small world in the rural Bourbonnais - clod-wearing school pupils smelling of hay, the beaten-earth floor of the general store, the silence of the countryside. The Discovery of France effectively explains how this was both true, and not true, and for anyone who wants to understand the nation beyond the streets of Paris, it is essential reading. That it’s so immensely entertaining can only be considered a bonus.
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
Article comments