In "The Cult of the Nation of France," David A. Bell takes issue, arguing that the concepts of nation and fatherland had been important in France before then.
Even the Moroccans who carried out the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Hussey argues, ultimately linked Spain with these elites, and thus with "the hated nation of France".
I wish it were not so, but it is, and when Peter Carey asks if it's even a free speech issue, and calls PEN self-righteous for taking it up, and then attacks the entire nation of France for its arrogance; and when Teju Cole says that Israel is the cause of anti-semitism; then you have some very unfortunate bedfellows indeed.
Roberts calls for us to reassess this opinion – if Napoleon was great, the argument runs, it was because of the greatness of his ambition, to redraw the map of Europe around what he saw as the "great nation" of France, or civilisation.
Daron Hogg, who at 15 was so beautiful, bore such a likeness to Boy George and had such a winning way with harem pants that he was invited to tour Europe and perform with the band (sort of like a Saddam Hussein impersonator but with more lace), and managed to fool the entire nation of France.
In 1944, the local leadership of Vichy, the spa town, had requested that any mention of the ill-starred regime be stricken from official language; by 1959, de Gaulle was telling Vichy residents, "We are one people, and whatever ups and downs we may have suffered, whatever events we may have seen, we are the great nation of France, the one and only French people".
