The French and the English once settled their bloody differences on the battlefield.
That evolved into a love-hate relationship based on mutual mistrust with the French mocking "les rosbifs" and the English lampooning "the frogs".
But now, with interdependence reigning supreme in an ever-shrinking global village, the entente could not be more cordiale as Queen Elizabeth prepares to welcome France's flamboyant new President Nicolas Sarkozy to Windsor Castle on Wednesday.
Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac was renowned for his testy clashes with former British leader Tony Blair.
He said scornfully of the British "you can never trust people with such terrible food" and called Anglo-French relations "a turbulent love affair."
In sharp contrast, Sarkozy has been an open admirer of Britain, praising its buoyant economy and flexible workforce.
And after his turbulent love affair with supermodel Carla Bruni, all eyes will be on France's newly-wed First Lady.
Celebrity-obsessed British tabloids are bound to have a field day covering the woman who counts pop icons Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton among her former lovers.
Sarkozy, nicknamed "President Bling-Bling" for his flashy lifestyle, could not be more different from Blair's successor Gordon Brown, the austere son of a preacher who would not be seen dead in Sarkozy-style ray-ban sunglasses and Rolex watch.
But the odd couple look set to develop a businesslike working relationship that mirrors what binds and not what divides Britain and France.
Everywhere you look, the economies overlap.
At least 300,000 French people live in Britain.
Soccer Summit
Nothing could be more suitable than the venue for Thursday's Brown-Sarkozy meeting - the London stadium of Arsenal Football Club which is managed by Frenchman Arsene Wenger and is awash with Gallic players.
"Obviously as a Frenchman working in England, it's very important to me that cross-channel relations remain so good and I must admit that I've always enjoyed the warmth that people in this country have shown me," Wenger has said.
French chef Raymond Blanc, who has carved out a successful career in Britain, acknowledges: "We take ourselves very seriously. I have learned to laugh at myself in Britain."
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has a British wife - she is from Wales. British fashion designers prosper on Paris catwalks.
Up to 500,000 British have homes in France. Several hundred of them, their roots firmly in French soil, stood as candidates in France's recent local elections.
France is Britain's third biggest trading partner and supplies electricity to five million British households.
Thanks to the Channel Tunnel, London and Paris are just a high-speed train ride away on the Eurostar.
Even the British have moved the final destination station - it used to be Waterloo, named after Napoleon's final defeat in 1815.
The British and French have fought alongside each other in two world wars since the Entente Cordiale treaty was signed in 1904 to quell colonial rivalries stretching from Morocco to Newfoundland.
It has had to sail through some stormy seas.
Winston Churchill, exasperated by his at times testy relations with General de Gaulle, famously complained in 1942 "The Almighty, in his infinite wisdom did not see fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen."
French writer Jose-Alain Fralon once quipped that the British were "our most dear enemies".
But cordiale is no longer a hollow adjective and perhaps the last word should go to British comedian Tony Hawks after he bought and renovated a house in the French Pyrenees.
"I have a theory that we get on terribly well," he said. "The sense of humor is very similar.
The reason we fall out at the bureaucratic, administrative and political level is that we are both arrogant."
"They take the piss out of us and we take it out of them."
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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