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Video length: 12 min
Literature: journalist Guillaume Durand recounts having sensed “the funeral of the Fifth Republic” through contact with Mitterrand and Chirac
Journalist and radio host Guillaume Durand puts part of his memoirs on paper in his book “Bande à part”, which he publishes with Plon. Invited to franceinfo, Monday September 23, he comments on some excerpts in light of current political events.
The writer and journalist Guillaume Durand publishes Band apart at Plon, where he brings in a gallery of personalities: former presidents, rockers and also the novelist Françoise Sagan meet in this story. It all started with a “phone call” of “François Mitterrand” in 1995, says the author in the “18h/20h” of franceinfo, Monday September 23.
Guillaume Durand agreed to meet the former president, after thinking it was a joke. He has a vivid memory of it: “I see a sort of very small gentleman […] ravaged by illness, he knew from July 1981 that he was ill”he said. “I had the feeling that during that period the funeral of the Fifth Republic was beginning.”adds Guillaume Durand, citing the memory of “Jacques Chirac exhausted” at a dinner. Also, it refers to “what we are currently experiencing with the Barnier-Macron episode”.
“We can’t do it”notes the journalist, who says he has seen both the right and the left attempt the arduous task of straightening out the country over the last thirty years, without succeeding. “Why would this team be more successful than the others?”asks Guillaume Durand about the new government.