Michel Droit

Michel Droit (23 January 1923, Vincennes, Val-de-Marne - 22 June 2000) was a French novelist and journalist. He was the father of the photographer Éric Droit (1954–2007).

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Life

After studying at the Faculté de Lettres de Paris and at Sciences-Po, he joined the army in 1944 and was wounded near Ulm in April 1945. He took on a career as a press, radio and television journlist after the Second World War and at the 1960s he was the preferred television interviewer of général de Gaulle.

His first novel, Plus rien au monde, dates to 1954. In 1964, he won the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française for his Le Retour. On 6 March 1980, on the same day as Marguerite Yourcenar, he was elected as a member of the Académie française, replacing Joseph Kessel.

He wrote a polemic against a reggae adaptation of La Marseillaise as "Aux armes et cætera" by Serge Gainsbourg, reproaching him for "provoking" a resurgence of anti-Semitism and thus making things difficult for his "co-religionists". Droit was attacked for this position by the MRAP.

He got into legal difficulties as a member of the CNCL, a television regulator set up in the 1980s, but this was thrown out of court with the help of his lawyer Jean-Marc Varaut.

He accidentally killed one of his companions on a safari in Africa[1].

He is buried in the Passy Cemetery.

Works

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Notes

  1. ^ (French) Un accident de chasse, une balle qui part toute seule, un compagnon qui s’abat à trente mètres et qui meurt dans ses bras
  2. ^ a b c d Série "Le temps des hommes"
Cultural offices
Preceded by
Joseph Kessel
Seat 27
Académie française

1980–2000
Succeeded by
Pierre Nora