Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize 2023
A Telegraph Book of the Year
A Times, Spectator and Prospect Book of the Year

One of the great contemporary historians of France on one of the most controversial periods of twentieth-century French history

Few images more shocked the French population during the Occupation than the photograph of Marshal Philippe Pétain - the great French hero of the First World War - shaking the hand of Hitler on 20 October 1940. In a radio speech after this meeting, Pétain told the French people that he was 'entering down the road of collaboration'. He ended with the words: 'This is my policy. My ministers are responsible to me. It is I alone who will be judged by History.' Five years later, in July 1945, the hour of judgement - if not yet the judgement of History - arrived. Pétain was brought before a specially created High Court to answer for his conduct between the signing of the armistice with Germany in June 1940 and the Liberation of France in August 1944.

Julian Jackson uses Pétain's three-week trial as a lens through which to examine the central crisis of twentieth-century French history - the defeat of 1940, the signing of the armistice and Vichy's policy of collaboration - what the main prosecutor Mornet called 'four years to erase from our history'. As head of the Vichy regime in the Second, Pétain became one of France's most notorious public figures, and the lightening-rod for collective guilt and retribution immediately after the Second World War. In France on Trial Jackson blends politics and personal drama to explore how different national factions sought to try to claim the past, or establish their interpretation of it, as a way of claiming the present and future.

"A superb book ... Jackson is that rare beast: a distinguished academic historian who writes with flair and clarity... one could almost be buried in a work of high-class fiction... 5/5 stars" - Sunday Telegraph

"If... cowardice, bad faith, dishonour and moral ambivalence is your thing, read on... A highly talented storyteller, Jackson certainly knows how to set the scene... What is chilling in Jackson's beautifully researched and meticulous account of the trial is the hopeless mediocrity of almost all people involved in it: from judges and jurors (résistants and parliamentarians) to lawyers prosecutors and witnesses." - Observer

"Julian Jackson, the foremost historian of the period, here provides a magisterial account of this extraordinary yet also somehow squalid courtroom drama and its context. ... [A] fine, thought-provoking book." - Sunday Times

"A splendid book ... The central narrative of the trial grips like a thriller ... Jackson's vivid prose is leavened by wit and sharpened by telling details ... This is a substantial achievement by a historian at the top of his game." - Literary Review

"In France on Trial, his masterful account of the case, the historian Julian Jackson explains that it was not just Pétain who was being called to account, but the whole of France." - Financial Times

"Painstakingly researched ... Jackson vividly reconstructs the drama." - Economist

"An enthralling book ... The past is dangerous, you see. Real, hard history of this kind can reach out of the page and stick its thumb in your eye. Who needs fiction when the truth is as gripping as this? 5/5 stars." - Mail on Sunday

"An essential key to understanding the country's recent past." - Spectator

"A scrupulous and vivid reconstruction of the trial" - Times Literary Supplement

"'It is a sound approach to cover such a big canvas, one that springs to life thanks to Jackson's command of sources and exquisite use of anecdotes. ... There is a cinematic quality to the way Jackson brings us into the packed courtroom ... Listening to the testimonies, we too wrestle with terrible dilemmas'" - The Critic

"Professor Jackson's clear exposition of a criminal trial in the context of modern French history is an excellent illustration of a certain class of case with serious political consequences, beyond those of the accused." - Irish Legal News

"I have nothing but praise for the way Jackson tells the story, with a clear elucidation of the swirling political passions, and vivid portraits of the heroes and villains, and those in between." - Tablet

"Brilliantly researched and vividly narrated ... Jackson manages to engage the reader, adopting a rich literary style to communicate ... the atmosphere in and outside of the court and the personality of the characters ... Riveting." - Jewish Chronicle

"[An] outstanding book ... Jackson's vivid, stylish, sometimes even cinematic reconstruction suggests this court case was about far more than one elderly man ... Jackson skilfully evokes the trial scene's atmosphere... [a] gripping and timely book." - Business Post

"Highly detailed ... an impressive command of the nuances of this trial ... authoritative." - LA Review of Books

"This account of Philippe Petain’s 1945 trial for treason is a superb achievement, both reconstructing France’s Vichy shame and thoughtfully analysing its aftermath." - Daily Telegraph, Top 50 Books of 2023

"Perhaps the history book of the year. Jackson understands France like few others: he looks in vivid fashion at the trial of the arch-collaborator, and how the actions of a man who had embodied France’s heroism in the Great War became, 20 years later, the symbol of its shame … he subtly argues that the whole French nation, and not just its disgraced leader, was on trial." - Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year

"France on Trial stands out – a meticulously researched, attractively written account of the trial of the first world war hero turned Nazi collaborator Marshal Petain and its woeful Vichy background. Excellent on Petain’s legacy in modern right-wing French politics, Jackson adopts the requisite tone for a historian of our times, interrogating uncomfortable truths with objectivity mixed with lightness of touch." - Spectator, Books of the Year

"This extraordinary book exposes how various sides in the Petain debate have manipulated the historical record in a desperate attempt to make the past palatable." - The Times, Books of the Year

"Julian Jackson’s France on Trial grapples with the life and (mis)deeds of Philippe Pétain—the French general who led the Vichy regime during the Second World War—and the country’s dark feelings of hatred and guilt after the war." - Prospect Books of the Year