Charles de Gaulle: The Man Who Rebuilt France

Richard, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

It's a pleasure.

Was de Gaulle born into the French ruling elite? Where was

he from? He's born in Lille.

He's not really born into the ruling elite.

He describes himself when he has to describe himself during the Second World War to the British.

He says, petite noblesse de campagne, small provincial nobility.

It's a second son of a minor family.

His father, in fact, is a schoolteacher.

So not grand at all in that way.

There's no family chateau or anything like that.

Very striking contrast with Churchill, Churchill's grandson of a duke.

And of course, when de Gaulle first meets Churchill, I think actually it's the first time in his life he's met that kind of grand aristocrat.

And I mean, France, this period, I find it so fascinating.

I mean, there are monarchists around, there's Catholics and certain anarchists.

Does his family background give him a sort of strong grounding, a sort of a worldview that will sustain? Or was it sort of slightly more

nuanced family? Yeah.

Absolutely.

So de Gaulle comes from a royalist family.

So it's a family that is not at ease with the French Republic, the Third Republic that's been in power since the 1870s.

It's a family that it's hard to know how seriously to take French royalism.

In a way, French royalism is a kind of style rather than a political project.

It means a kind of distaste for parliament, nationalism.

Yes, I always wonder, Rich, when you see the royalists winning elections, is there like a prince across the water? Is there some Bourbon that they're all toasting? Or again, is it just a sort of expression of somehow opposition to the Republic?

A bit of both.