Richard Cobb

Praise for French and Germans, Germans and French

Richard Cobb is a visionary. His books will take you on an extraordinary intellectual and emotional journey.

The New York Review of Books

His France - urban, northern, provincial, pedestrian, noisy, unpuritanical, festive - was in contrast to, and predicated upon, another France: bureaucratic, official, suburban, safe, rule - crazy, scared.

Julian Barnes

Cobb was a true historian of life 'from below', using archival evidence to bring alive the reality - and the suffering - of ordinary people's existence.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New Statesman

Richard Cobb is a visionary. His books will take you on an extraordinary intellectual and emotional journey.

The New York Review of Books

His France - urban, northern, provincial, pedestrian, noisy, unpuritanical, festive - was in contrast to, and predicated upon, another France: bureaucratic, official, suburban, safe, rule - crazy, scared.

Julian Barnes

Cobb was a true historian of life 'from below', using archival evidence to bring alive the reality - and the suffering - of ordinary people's existence.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New Statesman

Richard Cobb is a visionary. His books will take you on an extraordinary intellectual and emotional journey.

The New York Review of Books

His France - urban, northern, provincial, pedestrian, noisy, unpuritanical, festive - was in contrast to, and predicated upon, another France: bureaucratic, official, suburban, safe, rule - crazy, scared.

Julian Barnes

Cobb was a true historian of life 'from below', using archival evidence to bring alive the reality - and the suffering - of ordinary people's existence.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New Statesman