Pierre de Boisdeffre

Pierre Jules Marie Raoul Néraud Le Mouton de Boisdeffre (11 July 1926 – 23 May 2002) was a French diplomat, man of letters and literary critic.

Biography

Pierre de Boisdeffre was born on July 11, 1926 in Paris, the grandson of General de Boisdeffre, from whom he took his surname. He attended school at La Châtre, then at the Lycée Condorcet. He also attended the Collège Stanislas during Occupation. He graduated as a valedictorian from the École libre des sciences politiques, and then, with a law degree, was admitted to the National School of Administration in 1946, after which he had a brilliant career.

Civilian administrator at the Ministry of National Education, in the Department of Arts and Letters, he moved from the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, where he was appointed Deputy Director of Information in 1959. This position was decisive as he became director of programs, and then director of French broadcasting at ORTF from 1964 to 1968.

In 1968, he became cultural advisor to the French Embassy in London, then in Brussels in 1971. Member of the French delegation to UNESCO in 1978, he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary the following year, then Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Uruguay from 1981 to 1984, then to Colombia. He represented France as permanent ambassador to the Council of Europe in 1988, his last post.

Pierre de Boisdeffre died on May 23, 2002, following a long illness. He is buried in the cemetery of La Châtre in the tomb of the Néraud family2 , originally from that town. His wife Béatrice died in 2013.

Works

• Vocation de l'Europe, 1950
• Métamorphose de la littérature (1950; awarded the Grand prix de la critique).
  • Tome I: De Barrès à Malraux.
  • Tome II: De Proust à Sartre.
• Les Fins dernières (1952)
• Des Vivants et des morts (1954)
• Une Histoire vivante de la littérature d’aujourd’hui 1938-1958 (1958). Reprinted as Histoire de la littérature française des années 30 aux années 80 (2 volumes; 1985)
• Hernan Cortès (1960)
• Où va le roman? (1962)
• Les Écrivains français d'aujourd'hui (1963)
• Giono (1965)
• La poésie française de Baudelaire à nos jours (1966)
• Prénoms (1967)
• La cafetière est sur la table (1967)
• Lettre ouverte aux hommes de gauche (1969)
• Vie d’André Gide (1970)
• La Foi des anciens jours et celle des temps nouveaux (1977)
• De Gaulle malgré lui (1978)
• Goethe m'a dit: entretiens imaginaires (1980)
• Contre le vent majeur (1994)
• André Malraux, la mort et l'histoire (1996)
• L’Église au milieu du gué (1997)
• Le Lion et le Renard (1998)

References

• Denise Bourdet, Pierre de Boisdeffre, dans: Encre sympathique, Paris, Grasset, 1966.
• François de Boisdeffre, Les Le Mouton, Paris, 2007 (ISBN 978-2-9531165-1-9)
• Alain Larcan, notice biographique, p. 14 [archive] [PDF]
• Antoine Blondin, Ma vie entre les lignes, Paris, La Table Ronde, 1982.

External links

• Works by Pierre de Boisdeffre at Gallica