The Last Great Frenchman: A Life of General De Gaulle

“I am France, ” General Charles de Gaulle announced when he formed the Free French in 1941. It was no idle boast. Following France’s rapid capitulation to Nazi forces, de Gaulle alone stood for a France undefeated and still fighting. Through sheer force of will, he made himself heard, rescuing French dignity and insuring that at the end of World War II France would be among the victorious armies, her status as a world power recognized. It was an immense achievement, one that only a man of de Gaulle’s raw nerve, stubbornness, arrogance, and messianic conviction could have accomplished.

Charles Williams (Lord Williams of Elvel) is a retired business executive and Labour peer in the House of Lords. His biography of French Marshal Petain, entitled Petain won the 2006 Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography. Lord Williams played first-class cricket in the fifties for Oxford University, Essex and the Combined Services cricket team.