Latest from Diane de Vignemont
Even Before the Heist, the Louvre Had Been Robbed
For years, successive governments have celebrated France’s heritage while quietly starving it, reducing budgets, staff, security and maintenance until the guardians of the country’s treasures could no longer guard much at all.
A Plane Crashed in the Desert. Thirty-Five Years Later, It Would Help Take Down Nicolas Sarkozy
The families of the victims of a 1989 bombing never imagined they would see the name of the Libyan intelligence chief who was convicted for it resurface decades later — not as a fugitive brought to trial, but as a bargaining chip in the political rise of a French presidential hopeful.
Four Decades After His Imprisonment, France Can’t Stop Fighting Over Georges Abdallah
“Once a terrorist, always a terrorist?” The question has hovered over Georges Abdallah during his four decades in prison — not least because many do not believe he ever was one. With his release, France is once again fiercely debating what his incarceration means.
Gisele Pelicot: Finding Sisterhood at France’s Mass Rape Trial
Gisele Pelicot’s decision to make public the horrific details of her abuse has transformed her into a reluctant icon, galvanizing a movement of collective reckoning. The mass rape trial taking place in Avignon is not just a pursuit of justice; it is a crucible of solidarity and sisterhood.
How an American Film in 1984 Shaped the ‘Fetal Personhood’ Movement
In the 1980s, the notion that fetuses and embryos should be considered legal persons was just that: a notion. But in 2024, “fetal personhood” has become a reality for nearly one-third of American women of reproductive age living in some 19 states where abortion is unavailable or severely restricted — in no small part thanks to a film that came out four decades ago.
How Argentina’s Disappeared Took Center Stage in Paris
More than 30 years after the French Resistance had found its foothold in Buenos Aires, the Argentinian Resistance found its own in Paris. This iteration was bold, colorful and — in perhaps stereotypically Latin American form — theatrical, and the artist and intellectual-led movement would soon engulf the continent.
The French Left Is United, Not for the First Time
Just a few days after Macron’s explosive dissolution of the National Assembly, 25 parties on the French left chose unity, forming the New Popular Front to counter the risk of a far-right majority. But what, if anything, can be learned from the first Popular Front of the 1930s?
How Exiles in Argentina Shaped France’s Resistance to Nazi Occupation
After the Nazis marched into France in 1940, a French veteran living almost 7,000 miles away in Buenos Aires started a small bulletin to counter fascist ideology — and sparked what would become one of the largest Free French resistance movements in the world.
The Medical Instrument Behind 135 Years of Women’s Pain
In 1889, French surgeon Samuel Pozzi, inspired by an American Civil War-era bullet extractor, invented an instrument to ease gynecological exams and provide better care for women. Despite causing debilitating pain, it is still used worldwide 135 years later.