So where does the perception that the French don’t like us come from?
Ah well you see. As my tour guide on the way to Monet’s garden some years ago took great pains to point out, pressing her red tipped fingers into the back of a coach seat with one hand and clutching a mic with the other like a hand grenade with the pin out, ‘it’s all the fault of Henry VI’.
From 1066 to the coronation of Henry VII the first Tudor king in 1485, a Welshman with a dubious right to succession, the thrones of England, France and the Dukedom of Normandy were all hotly disputed and fought over. Thanks to Alfred’s dad’s holiday romance, succession was never a clear issue. Marriage alliances between England’s kings and nobles with nobles from provinces in France, created any number of spurious claims to the successions to the French throne.