Stubborn, arrogant, a genius: France’s De Gaulle epic shows up the tepidity of our politics | Alexander Hurst

The man who led Free France during Nazi occupation was single-minded to the point of obstinacy. But he believed in his own power to make history How much of our political agency have we sacrificed on the altar of imagined constraints? That question has been troubling me since last week, when I stepped out of the glitteringly art deco Grand Rex cinema in Paris. I had just been to see part one of La Bataille de Gaulle, a two-part epic based on British historian Julian Jackson’s extraordinary bi...

By Alexander Hurst