1000 Years of Annoying the French

But there was one big difference between Paris and Jersey or Guernsey – almost all the active male Channel Islanders had gone off to fight rather than sitting around in cafés arguing about the true meaning of moral freedom.

The father tried to insist on marriage, which Robert refused, mainly because Herleva wasn’t posh enough – tanners were amongst the lowest of the low. Leather was tanned using a combination of urine, animal fat, brains and dung (dogs’ muck worked very well, apparently), which meant that leatherworkers were even more malodorous than cesspit-cleaners.

In fact, the Normans thought of the Franks as a bunch of limp Parisians who acted as if they owned the continent and needed to be kicked back home if they strayed too far from their snobbish little city.