François Picard is pleased to welcome Julian Jackson, the British historian, author and Emeritus Professor of Modern French History at Queen Mary University of London. His biography of Charles de Gaulle laid the foundation for France's two-part biopic, "De Gaulle: Résistance". And on the heels of that surprise box-office hit, Jackson's book is now available in French as "La Chute : France, 1940". He takes us back to the occupation of Paris and the extraordinary collapse of France in the summer of 1940.
Rather than treating defeat as inevitable, Jackson focuses on the uncertainty that gripped France as the war continued to spread across Europe. His book does not shy away from the scale of the disaster: "It was a disaster. It was a catastrophe. It was a dramatic military catastrophe."
