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Bad Faith
Carmen Callil, Jonathan Cape
“Extraordinary…touching… a
masterpiece of lacerating satire.” The
Observer
In the 1960s, Carmen Callil visited a psychiatrist called
Anne Darquier; they forged a close bond, which was broken
when Anne committed suicide. Years later Carmen discovered
that Anne’s father was the French war criminal, Louis
Darquier de Pellepoix. Louis Darquier was a French Nazi,
a collaborator and a con man. He married a failed, alcoholic
Australian actress, Myrtle Jones, and Anne, their only child,
was abandoned to a nurse at birth. She was raised in poverty
in Oxfordshire.
Their extraordinary story – and that of Louis Darquier’s
ascent to power before and during the Second World War – is
the key to a revelatory account of the terrible acts of the
Vichy government during the war years. Louis Darquier – always
broke, always desperate for attention, social cachet, women
and drink – became the longest serving Commissioner
for Jewish Affairs in theVichy government. Over seventy thousand
French Jews died in Auschwitz, most were sent to death during
his tenure. He was never brought to justice, having fled
to Madrid where he lived out the rest of his life.
Carmen Callil was born in Melbourne in 1938. She started work
in publishing in 1965, and in 1972 she founded the Virago Press
of which she was Chairman and Managing Director until 1982.
In 1982 she was appointed Managing Director of Chatto & Windus
and The Hogarth Press where she remained until 1993, continuing,
also, as Chairman of Virago Press until 1995. From 1985 she
was a member of the Board of Channel 4 Television. She
is now a critic and writer and divides her time between London,
and South-West France. |
