Julian Jackson
Professor of Modern French History, Queen Mary University of London
I am Emeritus Professor of Modern French History at Queen Mary, University of London. I am an historian and Fellow of the British Academy whose range of focus has covered various aspects of modern French history. I have studied and written on topics such as the crisis of the 1930s in France; the German Occupation, Vichy government, and Resistance; De Gaulle, Gaullism and its legacy; and the history of homosexuality in France.
EXPs by Julian Jackson
The myth of de Gaulle begins with his emergence as a political personality and continues with de Gaulle’s own self-mythologisation.
A lot of people are obsessed with a de Gaulle myth. The danger of talking too much about a myth is that we forget that there is a reality.
De Gaulle was suspicious of supranational institutions; he valued independence and sovereignty.