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In France today, Charles de Gaulle is everywhere: in memories, in street names, in monuments, in bookshops. At the most recent count over 3,600 localities had a public space – street, avenue, square, roundabout – named after him. This puts de Gaulle ahead of Pasteur, who comes a close second (3,001), and Victor Hugo, who comes third (2,258).1 The grandest space in Paris, site of Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe, was renamed the Place de l’Etoile- Charles de Gaulle immediately after his death. Walking from there down the Champs- Elysées, one soon reaches a statue of de Gaulle striding resolutely forward. Turning right at the statue, one crosses the Seine to the Hôtel des Invalides, France’s army museum, which houses a separate museum exclusively devoted to de Gaulle. Entering this museum is like crossing the threshold of a sacred Gaullist space. When an opinion poll in 2010 asked the French to rank the most important figures in their history, 44 per cent placed de Gaulle top (he accumulated 70 per cent of all choices), far ahead of Napoleon in second place with 14 per cent (38 per cent).2 All politicians, from left to right, invoke de Gaulle’s name. At the Presidential elections of 2012 he was cited as an example by both the Socialist François Hollande and his right- wing (supposedly Gaullist) opponent Nicolas Sarkozy – and by pretty well everyone else. Even the extreme- right Front National, whose founder Jean- Marie Le Pen was once a visceral anti- Gaullist, now celebrates de Gaulle’s legacy. But no contemporary French politician has more consciously sought inspiration in de Gaulle than Emmanuel Macron, whose official photograph as President shows him in front of a table on which one book lies open: the Pléiade edition of de Gaulle’s War Memoirs.
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