Certain Idea of France:The Life of Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle, the towering figure in twentieth-century French history is the only Frenchman whose historical significance can be ranked on a level with Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler and Stalin, and certainly the most remarkable French leader since Napoleon. More than any other individual, he shaped twentieth-century France and France's idea of itself.

 

Julian Jackson explores the contrast between de Gaulle the political figure and Charles the family man, who suffered the tragic premature death of a daughter born with Down's Syndrome. At one level it is hard to think of any Frenchman since Napoleon who has so marked France's history, yet a crucial argument in this new biography is that although de Gaulle was indeed a towering figure, much of the history de Gaulle supposedly changed would probably have happened anyway - France would have been liberated in 1944 with or without de Gaulle, Algeria would sooner or later have become independent - and his achievement was less to change history than to give it meaning. 

 

The is the first time that de Gaulle's unpublished archives and wartime papers (opened in 2004) have been used by any biographer. This is the definitive modern biography of de Gaulle in any language.