Yet on Wednesday, Francois Hollande made a gesture of reconciliation with 'Perfidious Albion'.

He became the first ever French president to visit a British cemetery in Normandy. In torrential rain, he shook hands with Parachute Regiment veterans at Ranville, where the 6th Airborne Division landed on June 6, 1944.

If that does not sound significant, remember that throughout the intervening 68 years, French governments have tried not to notice that the British were there on D-Day.
Paying their respects: French President Francois Hollande, right, joined Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, left, in the British war cemetery of Ranville, western France
Most French museums, not to mention school history books, make it sound like the Americans and the Resistance did it all. Millions of French people have seen Hollywood's D-Day epics; only about six recognise our part.

Paul Woodadge, a splendid tour guide who is himself British, but lives near Caen with his French wife. He told me sadly: 'Most British visitors nowadays know what Steven Spielberg has told them in Saving Private Ryan and Band Of Brothers, so they all want to go to the American sector. Some hardly get to our beaches at all.'.

Not just 1944, but our entire past, is seen by a new generation through a prism of celluloid myth and legend.

Our governments set a rotten example by their lack of interest in heritage, real history. Consider this: the centenary is fast approaching of the 1914 outbreak of World War I — one of the two largest and most terrible events in modern European history, which changed or destroyed the lives of millions. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2156699/Turning-backs-Britains-fallen.html