A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle - Hardcover

Jackson, Julian

4.43

858 ratings by Goodreads

9781846143519: A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846143519 ISBN 13: 9781846143519

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2018

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Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for History
A SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, DAILY TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, FINANCIAL TIMES, TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Masterly ... awesome reading ... an outstanding biography' Max Hastings, Sunday Times

In six weeks in the early summer of 1940, France was over-run by German troops and quickly surrendered. The French government of Marshal P�tain sued for peace and signed an armistice. One little-known junior French general, refusing to accept defeat, made his way to England. On 18 June he spoke to his compatriots over the BBC, urging them to rally to him in London. 'Whatever happens, the flame of French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished.' At that moment, Charles de Gaulle entered into history.

For the rest of the war, de Gaulle frequently bit the hand that fed him. He insisted on being treated as the true embodiment of France, and quarrelled violently with Churchill and Roosevelt. He was prickly, stubborn, aloof and self-contained. But through sheer force of personality and bloody-mindedness he managed to have France recognised as one of the victorious Allies, occupying its own zone in defeated Germany. For ten years after 1958 he was President of France's Fifth Republic, which he created and which endures to this day. His pursuit of 'a certain idea of France' challenged American hegemony, took France out of NATO and twice vetoed British entry into the European Community. His controversial decolonization of Algeria brought France to the brink of civil war and provoked several assassination attempts.

Julian Jackson's magnificent biography reveals this the life of this titanic figure as never before. It draws on a vast range of published and unpublished memoirs and documents - including the recently opened de Gaulle archives - to show how de Gaulle achieved so much during the War when his resources were so astonishingly few, and how, as President, he put a medium-rank power at the centre of world affairs. No previous biography has depicted his paradoxes so vividly. Much of French politics since his death has been about his legacy, and he remains by far the greatest French leader since Napoleon.

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Review:

Jackson's new biography makes awesome reading, and is a tribute to the fascination of its subject, and to Jackson's mastery of it. (Max Hastings Sunday Times)

A tour de force, and by far the best biography in English to date. (Patrick Marnham Standpoint)

Scholarship of the highest class ... a truly great book, for after this all other biographies can be cast aside. (Simon Heffer Sunday Telegraph)

A Certain Idea of France is more than just another, bigger, biography ... he has the skill and style to maintain a dramatic narrative over nearly 800 pages of text (Robert Tombs Spectator)

A Certain Idea of France is full of fascinating detail and anecdote ... It is a suitably monumental achievement. (Lewis Jones The Times)

Only a great biography could do justice to such a man. This one does it, magnificently. (Noel Malcolm Sunday Telegraph)

Jackson has written a biography that fully matches de Gaulle's remarkable life. ... This is too an extremely busy book, packed with anecdote, adventure and the kind of insider gossip that can only be foraged by an expert historian who is comfortable in the archives but who has eyes and ears ever alert to the telling details. (Andrew Hussey New Statesman)

Compelling and painstakingly documented (Economist)

With a fluent style and near-total command of existing and newly available sources, he peers behind the monolithic fa�ade to unmask a composite of opposing traits ... crafting the finest one-volume life of de Gaulle in English, Julian Jackson has come closer than anyone before him to demystifying this conservative at war with the status quo, for whom national interests were inseparable from personal honour and "a certain idea of France." (Richard Norton Smith Wall Street Journal)

Remarkable ... To tell the life of De Gaulle is also to chart the history of modern France, and in this suitably monumental biography rich with illuminating anecdotes, Jackson portrays his subject as a complex and contradictory character (PD Smith Guardian)

About the Author:

Julian Jackson is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London and one of the foremost British experts on twentieth-century France. His previous books include France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book Award, and his celebrated The Fall of France, which won the Wolfson History Prize in 2004. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and Commandeur dans l'Ordre des Palmes Acad�miques.

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