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A Certain Idea of France - The Life of Charles de Gaulle (Paperback)
Loot Price: R394
Discovery Miles 3 940
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A Certain Idea of France - The Life of Charles de Gaulle (Paperback)
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List price R505
Loot Price R394
Discovery Miles 3 940
You Save R111 (22%)
Expected to ship within 5 - 10 working days
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Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize for History, the Elizabeth Longford
Prize for Historical Biography, the American Library in Paris
Award, the Franco-British Society Literary Prize and the Grand Prix
de la Biographie Politique du Touquet 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 Petain 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draws on a vast range of published and unpublished memoirs and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.
General
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