With Malraux art and life, fantasy and truth, were impossible to disentangle. He was not among the first batch of writers invited to meet de Gaulle in Paris at the Liberation, possibly because of his 1930s reputation as a Communist fellow-traveller. Malraux’s Gaullist epiphany dated to the day in August 1945 when a car drew up at his door with a message from de Gaulle: ‘The General asks you in the name of France if you would be willing to come to his aid.’ This encounter had been set up by members of de Gaulle’s entourage who had reason to think Malraux might be susceptible to such an appeal.
