Charles de Gaulle
Relations with Europe provide the key to British postwar politics
Tom McTague shows how the two most consequential decisions for Britain over the past 80 years have been entering the European Union in 1973 and leaving it in 2020
Only Hitler could have brought the disparate Allies together
Their collaboration was riven by secret deals and betrayals, with Roosevelt suspicious of Churchill and Stalin suspicious of everyone, but all purporting to be great friends
The troublesome idealism of Simone Weil
Hailed as ‘an uncompromising witness to the modern travails of the spirit’ , Weil also exasperated those closest to her with her ambitions for heroic self-denial
Citizens of nowhere: This Strange Eventful History, by Claire Messud, reviewed
A fictionalised version of Messud’s recent family history traces the many moves of three generations forced into exile from Algeria
The trial without end
Was one venal old man primarily responsible for France’s catastrophe of 1940-44, or was it a case of collective failure? The question remains unanswered, says Patrick Marnham
A gentleman of Bordeaux
There was a moment during the war when De Gaulle was being more than usually impossible. Roosevelt, furious, asked Churchill…
Pride and prejudice
Jonathan Lynn, co-author of Yes Minister, has excavated the history of France during the two world wars and discovered dramatic…
