Sudhir Hazareesingh teaches politics at Oxford. How the French Think was published in 2015.
‘There is a France only thanks to the state,’ Charles de Gaulle declared in 1960, ‘and only by the state can France be maintained.’ He spoke these words during the ‘week of the barricades’ in Algiers, when a pied-noir uprising gained significant support in local units of the French army. De Gaulle appeared on television in full military uniform, and...
For most Haitians, it didn’t matter whether the plantation owner was Black, mixed-race or white; or whether he claimed France, Britain or Haiti as his nation, nor did it much matter whether the system...
French intellectual tradition is often happier than its rival Anglo-Saxon versions to put the world – and the fact – in parenthesis for as long as the conversation is worth having.
At the military academy in Saint-Cyr, which he entered in 1908, Charles de Gaulle was known as ‘the great asparagus’. But aside from the fact that he stood six feet four in his socks...
If Napoleon inspired loyalty and affection, even in defeat, it was not because of the would-be imperial splendour, but because the French people continued to see him as they had done from the start: as...
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.