Sophie Pedder, Paris Bureau Chief for The Economist and author of “Revolution Française: Emmanuel Macron and the Quest to Reinvent a Nation”, kindly granted us an exclusive interview on the occasion of the publication of an updated edition of her book. This highly-praised [*] analysis of the Macron Presidency was first published by Bloomsbury in August 2018, and has now been published in paperback in a second edition, which brings it up to February 2019, with coverage and analysis of more current events, including the yellow vest movement. The updated version was published in the UK on May 5, 2019 and is about to be published in the USA, on July 2, 2019.
On a personal note, I was gratified to learn from Ms. Pedder that she has seen my translation of Emmanuel Macron’s « Révolution » in bookstores in England, alongside her book. As I stated in the interview I granted myself, my selfish motive for running this blog is that it gives me a platform and a pretext to communicate with some of the crème de la crème of English and French linguists. This circle has now been expanded to include one very prestigious journalist and author, who, like Emmanuel Macron, has created her own Revolution.
Une traduction de cet entretien paraîtra prochainement sur le blog.
Jonathan G.
[*] Reviews have included the following:
"Quick-paced, witty and elegantly written... a breath of fresh air for the calmness and intelligence with which she deciphers and dissects the man and the politician." - The Times
"a terrific first draft of a history with significance far beyond the borders of France" - Wall Street Journal
"un des tous meilleurs livres sur Macron" - Etienne Gernelle, France Inter
I N T E R V I E W
Jonathan Goldberg: If I may be a little persnickety, I wondered why the title of your book uses the English spelling of “Revolution” (without an acute accent on the e) and then the French word « française» (with a cedilla).
Sophie Pedder: I discussed this with the publisher at the time. In the end, we decided that the title is in English, not French. So it therefore should not be written as two French words, but rather as an English phrase with the use of a French qualifier, as per "a la française".
JG: What inspired you to write the book?
SP: In 2017 I was covering the French presidential election for The Economist. As the weeks went on at the start of that year, it became progressively clear that the country was witnessing an extraordinary, compelling personal and political drama. A young 39-year-old, who had never been elected to any political office before, increasingly looked as if he might actually seize the presidency and turn French party politics upside down. I had first met Emmanuel Macron back in 2012, when he was an adviser to the French Socialist president François Hollande and had gone to talk to him regularly over the intervening years. So I also realised that I had piles of notebooks of conversations with him, which could help me piece together the thinking behind a public leader who was something of an enigma to the French. It was a story that was crying out to be written!
JG: In the conclusion to the book, you write that “Macron sounds less implausible in French, the language in which we had our conversation and one well suited to his exalted ambitions and glorious abstractions”. What did you mean by that?
SP: It struck me when I was leaving the Elysée Palace one Saturday afternoon, having interviewed the president in his first-floor office, that Macron’s highly conceptual approach is better suited to French than to English. Macron does speak English fairly fluently, but my sense is that when he speaks it, he sometimes doesn’t convey exactly what he intends. He is more subtle, and nuanced, in French. That’s why I have always preferred to interview him in his native tongue. When I translated his words later on after that interview, something seemed to happen. The English language made his phrases sound convoluted, pompous and over- intellectual. I think that he really is in this sense a president for the French, who like to hear talk about “grandeur” and “gloire”, in a way that the British, for example, would find a little ludicrous.
JG: What is your own academic background, and where did you learn to speak French?
SP: I studied French at school, so spent years conjugating verbs, but left barely able to have a conversation. It wasn’t until I spent six months in Paris, after graduate studies at the University of Chicago (following an undergraduate degree at Oxford), that I really learned the language. During that period, I took a class at the Sorbonne in “la langue et la civilisation française”. I am also married to a Frenchman, so that helped too!
JG:How long you have been the Paris correspondent for The Economist?
SP: I was posted to Paris in the middle of the Gulf War, in 2003, when Jacques Chirac was president. France at the time was not George Bush’s favourite European country: remember when Congressional cafeterias renamed French fries “freedom fries” in an irate response to Chirac’s threat to veto at the UN Security Council the invasion of Iraq? But it was also one of those moments in history that reminds the world that France may be America’s oldest ally, but it is never afraid to stand up to the US and speak its mind if it considers this to be in French or wider interests.
JG: Which other president under the French Fifth Republic does Macron most resemble?
SP: I would say that there are echoes of various different predecessors in Macron. In his lofty ambitions and talk about French grandeur, he is trying to tread in the footsteps of Charles de Gaulle. In his youthfulness and energy, he resembles Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who, like Macron, skied and played tennis. I would say that lately, as Macron’s more wily and secretive political nature has become apparent, there are even shades of François Mitterrand, whom the French knew as le sphinx.
JG: What was the most surprising element you came across during your research for the book?
SP: I was certainly surprised to discover that Macron’s paternal great-grandfather, George Robertson [**], was an English butcher from Bristol. His family is from Amiens, in the Somme, a region scarred by the battlefields of the First World War. Macron’s great-grandfather stayed on in France after serving in the war, and married a French woman in Abbeville, near Amiens. If I was to identify the most surprising thing that Macron told me, I would say that it was when he compared himself to his dog, Nemo, a cross between a Griffin and a Labrador. He said he felt like “a crossbreed”. I think what he meant by this is that he has never felt he fully fit in. When Macron was a child, he preferred to spend time reading with his grandmother than playing with other kids after school. Later in life, he left a top job in the civil service to go to work for Rothschild bank, and colleagues there told him he wasn’t really a banker. Then when he left Rothschild to go to work at the Elysée Palace, his new colleagues dismissed him as a banker. The strength of character that comes from this outsiderish quality is, I think, partly what gave Macron the self-belief to launch the bid for the presidency against all the odds—and ultimately win.
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[**] "Macron to host May in Somme, where his British great-grandfather fought"
The Guardian, November 1, 2018
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