France

"Julian Jackson is today’s most important and prominent British historian of France. The way that the war is seen by historians changed completely with the publication of a book in the 60s by an American, Robert Paxton, called Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944. It was the bible for people who wanted to understand what happened in France during the Second World War. He showed for the first time that Vichy was a government of oppression in its own right; it didn’t require the German occupation to do the things it did. Today, the book which I think has replaced or rather expanded upon Paxton’s is France: The Dark Years . One of the interesting things about it is the way it sheds light on how the French have dealt with the events of the war. What struck me when I first came here, and to France, of course, was how alike the British and the French are, but they don’t see it. To someone like me, an Australian, they seem to have much in common. One notable aspect of this is their exceptional nitpicking about each other. It’s because they’re so close, you know, like sisters. One of the things the British cannot get into their heads is that the French have faced up to what they did during the war – they know exactly what they did and they write about it endlessly. They are not happy about it, mostly – of course there are still unreconstructed old war criminals out there. But the British don’t realise this. When I published my book Bad Faith , if I had to answer that question once – ‘Do you think the French will ever face up to what they did during the war?’ – I answered it a thousand times: ‘They’ve already faced up to it.’ And Julian Jackson explains to the British what actually happened, what the French have done since about the terrible things their government was responsible for. It’s a great book, a great work of history."