In 2003, as America was gearing up for the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a tall Frenchman with a thick silvery mane took the floor at the UN in New York. Dominique de Villepin was then France’s foreign minister, and what marked minds was not only his uncompromising anti-war message, but the way he uttered it: his speech was a magnificent rhetorical appeal to values and ideals. In a deep, silky tone, he spoke for an “old country” that has known war and barbarity but has “never ceased to stand upright in the face of history and before mankind”. As the “guardians of an ideal, the guardians of a conscience”, the UN, like France, he declared, had a duty to plead for disarmament by peaceful means.
There was something quintessentially French about this speech, argues Sudhir Hazareesingh, a professor of politics at Oxford University, who opens his impressive new book with the scene. What is it about the French, he asks, that makes them think and speak like this?
http://econ.st/1LbEBtB
An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People
- Allen Lane
- Format: Hardback
- Published: 25 Jun 2015
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/books/how-the-french-think/9781846146022/#255AiHTuxYRibEPj.99
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