“In the organized gang”: Mitterrand and his special friendship

They. “Politics is a group story”A few months after his election in 1981, he turned to Jean Lacouture. Francois Mitterrand knew what he was talking about, he always had a cult of friendship. “He who entered the circle never left it”– repeated Jacques Attali, his former advisor. This is one “stripes”, remained in the shadows when it was essential and dear to the socialist, which is illustrated here by journalist Sébastien Le Fol. They were four: François Mitterrand; Pierre de Benouville, figure of resistance, RPR MP, Marcel Dassault Eminence Gris; André Bettencourt, minister of de Gaulle and Pompidou, second French estate (by his wife, Lilian); And François Dalle, the iconic boss of L’Oreal. “Four Provincial Bourgeois”From the Catholic and conservative right, sometimes extreme, “The Four Musketeers” For better (adolescence, literature, loyalty) and for worse (witches, business connections), four childhood friends, in life and in death.

Mitterrand met Benouville at the College of Saint Paul in Angoulême; Dahl and Bettencourt, a little later, in the famous “104”, the house of the Marist brothers, rue de Vaugirard, where, like Mauriac before him, he was a guard when he arrived in Paris, from 1934. Then they never. More remained, the last three accompanied the first one up the Elysée. “Don’t be fooled by appearances, Francois is one of us. The French elected the last right-wing president, but they don’t know it.Slipped to convince his bourgeois friends, Pierre de Benouville, who trained in the circles of Cagulari and Maurassi.

Unpublished archives

in an organized gang, Based on unpublished archives, it is the fruit of painstaking (more than ten years) and meticulous research in chiaroscuro. Author (editor at TelegramFormer managing editor point) reflects this particular companionship in faded memories, prewar ideologies, brimstone and “Shared Secrets”. The hollow tells the story of Mitterrand’s transformation into a left-handed man, at the cost of ellipses and lies, with the help of these three friends, skillfully woven into the legend, who help him erase the traces of his past. “Only Benouville, Dallé and Bettencourt knew what he looked like without his disguise. Moreover, they never believed in his metamorphosis. But in public they agree to play out the script he dictates. The end justifies the means”writes Le Fol.