Cross Channel Currents explores the understandings and misunderstandings that make up the Entente Cordiale - the hundred-year relationship between Britain and France, as well as the everyday common interests and shared pleasures that give it substance.

Contributors include the late Roy Jenkins, in a witty and personal view of Winston Churchill's relationship with France; Pierre Messmer, a companion of Charles de Gaulle during World War II and later his prime minister; former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who remembers the historic meeting of Edward Heath and Georges Pompidou; Hubert Vedrine, a former French foreign minister, on the difficulties of cross-Channel relations; and their successors Dominique de Villepin and Jack Straw.