The France Alphabet, Paperback

The France Alphabet is a wry, informative handbook for the discerning international traveller on how to handle the French. It offers essential A-Z insights into France and its ways through a snap alphabetic look at characters, traditions and historical events that together get to the essence of who the French are.

France's best known writers and thinkers over the centuries come under the handbook's microscope with a light, challenging touch, as do world figures like Napoleon and Joan of Arc as well as France's role in high fashion, sex and the art of staying slim. For newcomers to France, indeed also for those already acquainted with its ways, The France Alphabet gives fresh insider counsel on how to discuss these things, some extremely touchy, when in French company.

Each A-Z feature, from A is for Art, through R is for Revolution to Z is for Zola is the selection of English author David Lawday, who has long made France his home and has a French wife. Each one - with a brisk commentary and matching cartoon - epitomizes what it is that helps make the French the way they are.