What is the past historic and should I know how to use it?

The past historic (also called the passé simple) is one of the French past tenses, along with the perfect and imperfect. It replaces the perfect (passé composé) in literary texts and is therefore mainly used to describe completed actions in the past. It appears most commonly in texts with a 3rd person narrator and the ‘je’ form is rarely used. The passé simple never appears in spoken French. The good news is that at A-level you don’t need to know how to form the passé simple. However, it is useful to be able to recognise and understand it, as it appears in many of the texts that you will be studying. The passé simple is more difficult than many French tenses. However, there are some basic rules. For ‘-er’ verbs, you simply remove the ‘-er’ and add the following endings: ‘-ai’, ‘-as’, ‘-a’, ‘-âmes’, ‘-âtes’ and ‘-èrent’ . For most ‘-ir’ and ‘-re’ verbs, you remove the infinitive ending and add: ‘-is’, ‘-is’, ‘-it’, ‘-îmes’, ‘-îtes’ and ‘-irent’. The most common irregulars are avoir and être. They are formed in the following way. Avoir: j'eus,tu eus, il/elle eut,nous eûmes, vous eûtes, ils/elles eurent. Être: je fus, tu fus, il/elle fut, nous fûmes, vous fûtes, ils/elles furent. At A-Level, if you can remember the 3rd person endings and recognise the passé simple forms of avoir and être, that will be enough.