Uneasy allies: de Gaulle and Churchill 1940-44

Anyone wishing to understand the tortuous, love-hate relationship between David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy today will find all they need to know in Peter Mangold’s gripping study of the wartime Anglo-French relationship, which is really the story of Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle. Not that today’s pygmy politicians can measure up to their titanic forebears, but the dynamics of the cross-Channel partnership — brutally exposed here by the strains of war — remain essentially the same. Neither of these proud, ancient nations can stand the other — but they cannot do without each other either.

De Gaulle’s rise to power in the war is one of the most extraordinary transformations in 20th century history. In May 1940 this untypical Frenchman — tall, aloof, cold, unpopular with his military and political peers — was a mere under-secretary in a doomed French cabinet fleeing the German conquerors. Unlike his former mentor, Marshal Philippe Petain, this junior general was no revered war hero — having spent most of the Great War in a German PoW.