American writer Ernest Hemingway had close links with Paris. He first lived there in 1920 and played a marginal, much-mythologised, role in the 1944 liberation of the city. But now, 70 years on, memories of the author are starting to fade. Twenty years ago when I first started reporting from Paris, a story on Hemingway would have been so corny that you would have got short shrift from any editor had you ever had the gall to suggest it. Paris was full of Hemingway wannabes - young people just out of university sitting dreamily in cafes and struggling to get their prose more muscular. There were guided tours round the sites - his homes on the Left Bank and the Shakespeare and Company bookshop. No self-respecting acolyte would be seen on the street without a copy of Hemingways magisterial memoir of Paris in the 1920s, published posthumously under the title A Moveable Feast.The commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from the Germans brought it all back, because August 1944 was in fact one of the most celebrated episodes in the Hemingway legend. Already famous for his books, he was working as a correspondent attached to the American 5th Infantry Division, which was south-west of Paris in the town of Rambouillet. Here, in flagrant breach of the Geneva Conventions governing war reporting, Hemingway set up as a kind of mini warlord. His hotel room was full of grenades and uniforms, and he had command of a band of Free French fighters who reconnoitred the approach to Paris and provided information to the Allied armies. On 25 August 1944, the day of the German surrender, he entered Paris with the Americans from the west. With battle smoke marking the skyline, he careered down the Champs-Elysees to the Travellers Club - still there today, next to Abercrombie and Fitch - and ordered a bottle of champagne. Read more at; bbc/news/magazine-28951095
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 06:21:12 +0000
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