High life | 25 August 2012

With the exception of the French Academy immortals Michel Déon and Jean d’Ormesson, two wonderful writers and both the epitome of charm and graciousness, the French can be a pretty silly lot. They weren’t always. They got that way sometime between the two great wars, and turned even sillier during the German occupation and following their liberation by Eisenhower and co. Humiliated by Prussia in 1871, saved by America in 1917, done in for good by Germany in 1940, there were two more débâcles in store, Indochina and Algeria, but I’m jumping ahead.

I’ve just finished two books on Paris during the occupation and the liberation, one by Alan Riding about the cultural life in the capital, the other, a real gem, Paris After the Liberation, by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, published 18 years ago. (There is also the Charles Glass book on Americans in Paris during that period.)