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Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed

The debut novel by a historian of the Vichy regime is a personal J’Accuse, indicting the collaborators in her family for their part in France’s collapse in the second world war

Lee Langley
Cécile Desprairies.  All rights reserved to Cécile Desprairies
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 17 May 2025
issue 17 May 2025

As a young child in the mid-1960s, Cécile Desprairies listened hour after hour to her mother Lucie dreamily recalling the 1940s, dwelling on a past peopled by undefined heroes and ‘the bastards’ who murdered them. Names were rarely mentioned or hastily passed over. In the fashionable Paris apartment there were daily gatherings – her mother, aunt, cousin and grandmother twittering like birds, obsessed with fashion and cosmetics.

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