Richard Griffiths

Summary:A romantic novel set in Paris during the final years of the First World War in which the narrator, a sixteen-year-old boy, recounts his love affair with a woman whose husband is fighting at the Front. From the author of COMTE D'ORGEL. In French.-WorldCat

In this timely book, Richard Griffiths unravels fascism's somewhat nebulous history to give a true account of its meaning. Griffiths is the author of many books, his most recent being Patriotism Perverted.

"Cette étude, publiée en Angleterre en 1966, et en France en 1971, fut la première vue d'ensemble de la littérature catholique en France entre 1870 et 1914 (bien que de nombreux livres aient été consacrés à chacun des grands auteurs de cette période, y compris Huysmans, Bloy, Péguy, Claudel). Le fait de situer chaque auteur dans le courant de pensée de la période et dans le champ des résonances extra littéraires, et par rapport aussi à des auteurs mineurs le plus souvent négligés, nous fait découvrir bien des aspects mal connus de cette période singulière. Des générations de spécialistes de la littérature catholique française ont utilisé ce livre, épuisé depuis plusieurs années. Cette nouvelle édition, revue et mise à jour par l'auteur, est la bienvenue."--Page 4 of cover.

The epic battle between communism and liberal democracy ended with breathtaking ease, and the first few euphoric years of democracy's triumph seemed to hold out the promise of a world at last entering a political consensus around the rights and values of an individualistic society. But the closing years of the twentieth century have proved the resilience and extent of the century's third great political force: fascism. The success of fascist parties in European elections, the appearance of fascist-inspired groups in the United States, and the recurrence of fascistlike political behavior in the numerous nationalist-inspired wars now consuming the former communistic bloc have provoked a reevaluation of the political movement once thought utterly defeated and discredited. In fact, fascism has never received the serious attention and sustained scrutiny that has been trained on both communism and liberalism. Only a detailed, objective, and dispassionate approach to the question of what fascism is, and how and why it has been both a success in some countries and a failure in others, will begin to provide useful and constructive answers.

"This book is a sequel to Richard Griffiths's two highly successful previous books on the British pro-Nazi Right: Fellow-Travellers of the Right : British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany, 1933-9; and Patriotism Perverted : Captain Ramsay, the Right Club and British Anti-Semitism, 1939-40. It follows the fortunes of his protagonists after the arrests of May-June 1940, and charts their very varied reactions to the failure of their cause, while also looking at the possible reasons for the government's failure to detain prominent pro-Nazis from the higher strata of society. Some of the pro-Nazis continued with their original views, and even undertook politically subversive activity, here and in Germany. Others, finding that their pre-war balance between patriotism and pro-Nazism had now tipped firmly on the side of patriotism, fully supported the war effort, while still maintaining their old views privately. Other people found that events had sincerely made them change their views. And then there were those who, frightened by the prospect of detention or disgrace, tried to hide or even to deny their former views by a variety of subterfuges, including attacking former colleagues. This wide variety of reactions sheds new light on the equally wide range of reasons for their original admiration for Nazism, and also gives us some more general insight into what could be termed 'the psychology of failure'"--Provided by publisher.