No one has a better perspective on life on both sides of the channel than Julian Barnes. In these exquisitely crafted stories spanning several centuries, he takes as his universal theme the British in France; from the last days of a reclusive English composer, the beef consuming `navvies` labouring on the Paris-Rouen railway to a lonely woman mourning the death of her brother on the battlefields of the Somme. Clever, wise, reflective and imaginative, these stories are permeated with understanding of what it has meant for generations from these islands to cross the Channel.