Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died aged 96 on 7 January, was the personification of the travails and excesses of post-war France.
He was a co-founder in 1972 of the reactionary Front National, whose senior members included former Vichy collaborators and a former member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne Division. Yet on 21 April 2002 to universal surprise, he nonetheless beat the Socialist candidate and qualified for the second round of the French presidentials with 18 per cent of the vote. For some he was a malign towering figure of French politics and political life for six decades; for others the outspoken tribune of the French people insistent on stating fearlessly, even recklessly, in the manner of an Enoch Powell, what many did not want to hear.
Since his birth on 20 June 1928 in the small Breton fishing village of La-Trinité-sur-Mer he flirted willingly or not with the excesses of France’s turbulent history.
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