Cross Channel Currents explores the understandings and misunderstandings that make up the Entente Cordiale - the hundred-year relationship between Britain and France, as well as the everyday common interests and shared pleasures that give it substance.

Contributors include the late Roy Jenkins, in a witty and personal view of Winston Churchill's relationship with France; Pierre Messmer, a companion of Charles de Gaulle during World War II and later his prime minister; former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who remembers the historic meeting of Edward Heath and Georges Pompidou; Hubert Vedrine, a former French foreign minister, on the difficulties of cross-Channel relations; and their successors Dominique de Villepin and Jack Straw.

'Cross-Channel Currents, a thought-provoking collection of fifty or so historical and political essays, reminiscences and futurology, by distinguished French and British authors, published to mark this week's hundredth anniversary of this elusive Entente.' - The Independent

Douglas Johnson is professor emeritus of French history, University of London.
Richard Mayne is a writer and broadcaster. He was personal assistant to Jean Monnet, a senior official of the European Commission, and for six years its UK representative.
Robert Tombs is a reader in French history at the University of Cambridge, and the author of France 1814-1914 (1996).