De Gaulle

‘A concise and distinguished book’
Andrew Roberts, The Telegraph

‘Intelligent and entertaining … It will be top of the modern French history reading lists for years to come’
The Times Literary Supplement

‘This excellent account is a must-read’
The Good Book Guide

‘Jackson weaves the particularities of de Gaulle’s life into a clear picture … [an] excellent introduction’
Booklist

Charles de Gaulle, saviour of France’s honour in 1940 and founder of the Fifth Republic in 1958, was a man of contradictions. A conservative who brought the communists into his government and an imperialist who completed France’s decolonisation. As Julian Jackson shows, it was precisely because of these contradictions that de Gaulle was able to unite the French people behind a political system for the first time since the Revolution.

JULIAN JACKSON is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London, and has written extensively on French 20th-century history. His study of the French occupation, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944, was published in 2001 to widespread acclaim. As one of the country’s leading historians of French history, his contribution to the subject was recognised by his election as Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. He won the Wolfson History Prize in 2004 for The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940.