A Certain Idea of France Quotes

“One can however permit Spear the last word on one other detail of the journey when the plane touched down in Jersey to refuel:

"I asked de Gaulle if he wanted anything, and he said he would like a cup of coffee. I handed it to him, whereupon, taking a sip, he said, in a voice which indicated that without implying criticism he must nevertheless proclaim the truth, that this was tea and he had asked for coffee. It was his first introduction to the tepid liquid which, in England, passes for either one or the other. His martyrdom had begun.”
― Julian Jackson, De Gaulle

“As he was coming out of his meeting, Foccart was stopped by Yvonne de Gaulle in a state of great agitation because that afternoon she had been insulted in the street by a man driving a Citroën DS: 'Can you imagine, M. Foccart, a Citroën DS, not just anyone.”
― Julian Jackson, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

“What is striking about an event even as dramatic as the crisis of May 1958 is how disengaged the population seemed to be. There was more excitement a month later about the World Cup, where France reached the semi-final for the first time. One of the complaints of the more engaged proponents of Algérie Française was that, instead of offering the French a noble cause to defend in Algeria, de Gaulle was betraying his own vision of grandeur: a civilisation of heroism was being replaced by one of fridges. There was something in this. Exhausted by war, sickened by the political merry-go-round of the Fourth Republic and keen to profit from the material benefits offered by economic growth, the majority of the French were - for the moment at least - ready to enjoy their fridges, their televisions, their washing machines and their holidays, live their heroism vicariously through de Gaulle and allow him to govern as he wished.”
― Julian Jackson, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle

“De Gaulle had written that the Revolution had made France’s generals the victims of political upheavals which had ‘deprived them of prestige, often of life, sometimes of honour’. Pétain amended this to ‘deprived them of prestige, sometimes of honour, often of life’. De Gaulle annotated Pétain’s correction: ‘It is an ascending hierarchy: prestige, life, honour.’ ‘Honour’ or ‘life’ – protecting an ‘idea’ of France or protecting (or believing that one was protecting) the French – that was the nub of the conflict between Pétain and de Gaulle in 1940.”
― Julian Jackson, A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle