De Gaulle, an inexhaustible supply of inspiration for caricature | EUROtoday

In their ebook De Gaulle, France and the world (Gallimard, 2025), Alya Aglan and Julian Jackson retrace the journey of the hero of the Liberation, then of the top of state by way of the prism of press cartoons printed overseas. The topic couldn’t hope for higher authors, because the erudition of those two historians enhances one another completely to hold out such an investigation. Julian Jackson is the creator of a biography of the final, De Gaulle, a sure thought of ​​France (Seuil, 2019), whereas Alya Aglan printed an anthology of resistant humor from 1940 to 1945, Laughter or Life, anthology of resistant humor 1940-1945 (“Folio History”, Gallimard, 2023).

De Gaulle, by his future, but in addition by his distinctive silhouette, is every part the designer might dream of. From the enchantment of June 18, 1940 till his dying in 1970, he was, for caricature, an inexhaustible supply of inspiration. De Gaulle is typically camped as Gulliver hampered by Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, whereas he’s refrained from the D-Day negotiations (within the British journal News Chroniclein June 1944). Or, later, as a haughty monarch, when he refused the United Kingdom’s entry into the European Economic Community in 1963 (within the Swiss newspaper Nebelspalterin 1963).

Stubborn character

Reading the drawings, supported by rigorous legends and an illuminating reminder of the political context, reveals the persona of a head of state positive of his future and that of France on the planet. A need for independence, notably illustrated by a drawing by Edward McLachlan for the British tabloid Sunday Mirror (1967), during which the General contemplates a terrestrial globe whose floor he has painted black, except for the Hexagon.

Everything appears to have been commented on by the overseas press, the Evian Accords, which signed the independence of Algeria in 1962, the popularity of Mao’s China in 1964, the departure of the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1966. But additionally the repression of the Charonne demonstration in opposition to the Organization of the Secret Army in 1962, the rising hole with the aspirations of French youth in 1968.

You have 35.59% of this text left to learn. The relaxation is reserved for subscribers.