The last refuge of a scoundrel

To be successful, biographers must possess some degree of empathy with their subject. They need not convince themselves that they would always have acted similarly, still less play the part of counsel for the defence, but they will have failed if the reader does not understand why the subject of the biography behaved as he did and what the forces were that drove him onwards. Some degree of sympathy is essential, and the less appealing the subject, the more difficult the task will be. The difficulty is compounded if the biographer has been previously required to approach the material from a different angle: the facts are the same but the point of view sometimes means that they can seem startlingly different. If the biographer of de Gaulle is to tackle Pétain he must be prepared to stand intellectually on his head, a feat demanding much mental agility as well as a capacity to combine detachment with a fine understanding of human nature.