Anglophile and Francophile

After coming back from London and Paris trip last September I have been listening to BBC radio every day. And all my non-medical readings focus on WWI and French Revolution.  I am reading John Keegan’s and Martin Gilbert’s The First World War concurrently.  Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution is the iBook on my iPad.

They are all British or Scottish authors; no wonder my daughters call me Anglophile.  Janice even asked why I came to America, instead of England forty some years ago.  I said it was the same reason why Europeans went to Paris during Louis XIV’s reign.

The following is from Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization.

“Foreigners came to Paris as to a finishing school for all graces of body and mind.  Thousands of Italians, Germans, even Englishmen, preferred Paris to their native lands.”

By the way Churchill is a Francophile who saw that country “as being synonymous with civilization.”