Eheu fugaces. It is 1989 and I am off to Paris for the Sunday Telegraph, to cover the Sommet de l’Arche. Intended to commemorate the French Revolution’s bicentenary, it was a characteristic Gallic blend of grand projet, grandiloquence and frippery. The late Frank Johnson makes a suggestion. I ought to talk to Serge July, the editor of Libération, who is very close to Mitterrand; and here is a number for someone who will have M. July’s coordinates. Already halfway out of the door, not fully concentrating, I thought I was writing down July’s number.
I phoned it on landing, and asked for Serge July. ‘Do you mean Georges Joly?’ Perhaps I did. Put through, I told him that I was a colleague of Frank Johnson’s. ‘Ah, Monsieur: mon vieil ami Johnson. Bienvenue à Paris. Qu’est-ce que vous faites pour diner ce soir? Je vous propose un petit restaurant du quartier.’ Good old Frank, I thought, and I asked if I could come round that afternoon with a cahier: it might be an idea to work through a few complexities before we both got dined. Although there was a gracious ‘bien sûr’, M. Joly seemed surprised, On arrival, I knew that something was wrong. This was not the editorial office of a left-wing newspaper. I pressed on. Mitterrand had just been out-voted 11 to one at a European Council. What was going on? The alarmed expression on my interlocutor’s face was rising towards panic. ‘Pourquoi vous me demandez ça?’ I said that our friend Johnson had told me that he was a very distinguished editor, able to unravel the intricacies of French foreign policy. ‘C’est vrai, je suis redacteur, mais d’un journal de cuisine et de bons vins.
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