After watching several seasons of Un village français, it was inevitable that I would want to learn more about De Gaulle, someone I certainly already knew about, if not at the level I would have liked. At some point, I remembered that I had bought this biography about 15 years ago but never read it, so I pulled the forgotten ebook up on my phone and made my way through.

I’m going the book credit for being so thorough, and if Fenby is not always as critical as I might have been (his “De Gaulle proves the great man theory of history” conclusion to the book raised an eyebrow), he does not shy away from the problematic aspects of his life and career. Yet, I was irritated by a lot of small things in the book: inconsistent terminology and translation, a shift in format for day-by-day accounts of particularly important events, that sort of thing. As an academically oriented reader, I also would have preferred a more explicit working of sources into the text, even if I know most readers appreciate the more subtle way it’s done.

• The General: Charles de Gaulle and the France He Saved
• Jonathan Fenby
• Charles de Gaulle
• Un village français
• World War II