One of Vichy’s vilest

This is a ghastly story, powerfully well told. Lives of criminals form an accepted part of biography; within it, lives of con men are more difficult, because conmen cover and confuse their tracks so carefully. Carmen Callil triumphs over innumerable difficulties to make clear the career of Louis Darquier, one of the villains of the Vichy regime in France.

His father was a notable at Cahors, doctor, mayor, radical deputy, with a devoutly Catholic wife of superior lineage who bore him three sons; Louis, born in 1897, was the second. He survived the war as an artillery subaltern, and then went to the bad: a tremendous womaniser, a heavy drinker, a sponger and a cad. Wherever he went, he left a trail of debts. He chanced upon a Tasmanian actress, who fell for him and married him, without bothering to divorce her previous husband; they had a daughter, born in England, whom they at once abandoned to a nanny.