Pub Date: 2011-07-07 Pages: 720 Language: English Publisher:. Simon & Schuster UK No leader of modern times was more unique and more uniquely national than Charles de Gaulle As founder and first President of the Fifth Republic. General de Gaulle saw himself carrying France on my shoulders. When he first emerged on to the world stage in 1940. his insistence that he spoke for his nation might well have appeared impossibly arrogant for a recently promoted junior general who had never been elected to anything. But he personified many of the traits of his country which fascinate the rest of the world - its pride in itself. its intransigence. its historical and cultural heritage and its quasi-religious belief in the state Le General. as he became known from 1940 on.. appeared as if carved from a single monumental block. but was. in fact. extremely complex. a man with deep personal...