In Order of Rank 
Jeremy Harding
About half a million anxious people left Paris in September 1939 after the declaration of war. Then a workaday calm reclaimed the city, as French propaganda continued playing in the key of imminent victory: the government, headed by the right-leaning Radical Edouard Daladier, convinced most of France that the Allies would be more than a match for the Wehrmacht. No doubt there were still Parisians who imagined they’d have to pack their bags and head out eventually – which they did, when the Phoney War ended in May 1940. In the meantime foreboding was blunted by a fatal propensity to look on the bright sight.
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Jeremy Harding is a contributing editor at the LRB. His versions of Rimbaud’s poetry are published by Penguin along with John Sturrock’s translation of the letters.
Other articles by this contributor:
At the Royal Academy · Botticelli
Through the Trapdoor · Walter Benjamin’s Last Day
Behind the Sandwall · Morocco’s Shame
A Man or a Girl’s Blouse? · Serbia after Karadzic
Kosovo’s Big Men · Jeremy Harding talks to KLA officers and an ‘official government source’ in Kosovo
Sarko, Ségo & Co. · The Banlieues Go to the Polls
The Great Unleashing · The End of Jihad
It Migrates to Them · The Coming Megaslums
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