The General

"I am interested in de Gaulle because he was clearly a towering figure, and apparently the French regard him as the greatest Frenchman who has ever lived. Somebody said he conveyed the sense of being a ‘king in exile’, and with absolutely no authority at all he just declared: ‘I am France, I am France.’ Although he was totally dependent on the British for everything, nevertheless he stood up to Churchill and insisted on being treated as an equal partner in the fight against Nazism. He had a quite extraordinary sense of self-confidence, which, as we know, led to a lot of rows, and he was obviously a very difficult person to work with. And another amazing fact of his life is the way that he managed to save France from a civil war over Algeria by sheer political cunning. Another aspect this very well-written book brought home to me was how much suffering and violence the French have been through, for example in the Occupation, the Resistance, the Vichy government, the reprisals, all the killings that went on over Algerian independence, and the numerous assassination attempts on de Gaulle himself; an extraordinary period of violence which on the whole we escaped in Britain. No I don’t. I’m not defending or attacking the French. The reason I’m interested in this book is because de Gaulle offers a particular model of leadership – very autocratic, in a way that people today would not regard as acceptable, and yet a leadership that literally saved France on at least two occasions. What I think enabled him to get away with the huge risks he took in life, betting everything on extraordinary uncertainties, was because he was deeply rooted in his religious faith, and in a traditional family life, with a very supportive wife. He was a very good father, and in particular he had a Down’s Syndrome daughter to whom he was totally devoted, and he was reported as saying that everything he had done he had done for her, and without her he would not have done it. So it was his deep rooting in what you might call the very best of traditional values that enabled him to lead this high-profile life, taking extraordinary risks all the time. So de Gaulle was the conviction politician above all other conviction politicians. In fact, he despised all professional politicians, and of course he had a lot to despise in the kind of political manoeuvring that went on in the 1930s in France which eventually led to the Vichy government. He saw himself as standing above all politicians and refused to see himself as such, even though he was more astute, calculating and cunning that any of them. For a long time he refused to form a Gaullist political party and instead stood above the political fray. Tony Blair and Mrs Thatcher were conviction politicians, as we know. When right in their judgment then they can carry the country through to something wonderful, but if they are wrong, as many of us thought Tony Blair was over the Iraq war, then they can use all their power and conviction to lead us down a disastrous road. The point about de Gaulle was that he was clearly right on two absolutely crucial issues: first when people would have said he was mad to think that he could stand and represent France himself and get the French people to see that he did actually symbolise France, although the official government was in fact the Vichy one. Then, he recognised very quickly that independence for Algeria was inevitable, even though the Pieds Noirs, the French settlers in Algeria, who had helped him to come to power, looked to him to help Algeria remain part of France. Normally, yes, we think of these as opposites, but somehow he combined both. He was absolutely uncompromising in one way and yet extremely shrewd and politically calculating in another, which is something that enabled him to steer France through the Algerian crisis. Towards the end of his life he did get something wrong – he didn’t grasp the scale and extent of what was happening in France in 1968, though in the end he even pulled France through that. But he does pose a question about the kind of leadership we want. How wonderful it is to have strong leaders, and yet how dangerous. They’re great if they’re right and terrible if they’re wrong."

"A biographer can dig around and find interesting things about a person’s private life, and Fenby does this very well. For example, he shows how close de Gaulle was to his daughter who had Down’s Syndrome. She died in 1948, when she was only 20. But for her whole life de Gaulle was completely devoted to her. From the photographs and family memoirs you can tell there was a very special affinity between the two of them. When her father was with her she was much calmer and happier than when she was with anyone else. And, of course, he was totally distraught when she died. It’s a very thorough book and also very readable, especially when he’s describing dramatic moments in de Gaulle’s career, like in 1940, or 58 when he comes back to power, or 68 when he’s faced by this crisis on the streets of Paris. He tells it like a thriller, the pace changes and you feel transported into the moment. It’s very well written, and overall it’s the best available biography in English. Yes, and that’s what I mean when I say a biographer can look at the shortcomings of the man. Jonathan Fenby shows how de Gaulle completely misunderstood, misjudged 68 – he just didn’t see it coming. He had lost the plot. I think his biggest mistake is to have clung on to power for too long – he should have retired in 1965. But great men often think they are indispensable. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Part of de Gaulle thought the French were great, made for greatness, but there’s a whole other side to him that believed the French could also be mediocre, decadent. Of course, he’d seen both sides of France in his life… when he looks at Vichy and the French collaborating with the Germans, that’s not the better France. By the late 1960s you can see that he’s starting to feel the French have given up. There’s a glorious arrogance about him – he takes the fact that the French no longer support him as evidence that they’re no longer a great people. It’s almost like he thought: the French are not worthy of me. He resigned in 1969, after losing a referendum which he did not need to hold, so it was a kind of suicide. He died in November 1970."