$9.99 on Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play (December 2025)Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, 1931-1945 by Geoffrey Warner (XXX,000 words, YY illustrations)
“Pierre Laval is one of the most controversial figures in recent European history. Few authors have examined his career without passion, mainly hostile [...] What was long needed was a reasoned study of the man that threw on its subject the light of understanding, not the heat of partisan polemic, and this superb political biography by a perceptive British historian fills that need [...] Warner’s impartial and intelligent book, based upon exhaustive research, gives us the opportunity to see Laval’s career as a whole and to understand it for what it was.” — George W. Baer, Current History
“Pierre Laval[‘s ...] political history is minutely recounted in Geoffrey Warner’s study... Mr. Warner seems to have read all the records and basic material... The book [... is] not dramatic history, but then Pierre Laval was not the stuff heroes are made up either.” — Thomas Lask, The New York Times
“[T]he first meticulously researched political biography of Pierre Laval. In particular, by mastering a daunting mass of contemporary documentation, German, Italian, and American, [Geoffrey Warner] has freed his subject from the self-serving perspectives of French postwar trials and memoirs. The result is an original assessment and the soundest work on Laval in any language.” — Robert O. Paxton, The Journal of Modern History
“Geoffrey Warner’s lengthy study of Laval is [...] scholarly, readable, far and away the best thing on the man, and one of the most interesting accounts of the last years of the Third Republic and of the French State which followed it for four years. The point of view is detached and critical, the proportions, particularly for foreign affairs, are generous [... a] very good book” — John C. Cairns, International Journal
“With remarkable diligence, Warner has scrutinized all the available evidence — the memoirs, the diaries, the testimony at the liberation trials, the depositions before the parliamentary investigations, and the available documents from the Foreign Office, and he has questioned as well a number of surviving participants. He uses his sources critically and applies extreme caution in his deductions [...] an extended, detailed account of the course of French affairs, principally diplomatic, in the 1930’s and 1940’s [...] everyone will be indebted to Warner for his painstaking examination of the record.” — Joel Colton, The American Historical Review
“Geoffrey Warner’s life of Laval is a welcome reminder that serious history need not be dull. His book, with its easy-flowing style and numerous illustrations, looks at first sight like a typical popular biography. It is, in fact, a very scholarly work, supported by impressive research into primary and secondary sources, and its argument is distinguished by well-documented precision of the highest academic standard. This is likely to remain the most thorough biography of Laval for a long time.” — Norman Hampson, International Affairs
“Mr. Geoffrey Warner is to be commended for running a tight intellectual ship. It is quite a feat to steer adroitly through the key domestic and foreign developments of France from 1931 to 1945 and yet keep sharp focus on the primary object of examining, explaining, and evaluating Pierre Laval in his many roles over those fifteen years. The author lucidly exposes the standards and vision, the passions and prejudices, the consistencies and contradictions, the talents and shortcomings of Laval in his function as man, as parliamentarian, prime minister, and foreign minister during the Third Republic and then as multi-titled politician in the Vichy Regime. [...] Both in the reconstruction and the interpretation of the historical events, Warner has been impeccable in his scholarship and sophisticated in his judgment.” — Donald J. Harvey, The Historian
“Warner’s study of Laval is an exhaustive, multidimensioned, sometimes sprawling examination of what happened in France — as he sees it after impressive engagement with countless documents — from Laval’s first premiership to his execution.” — Jean T. Joughin, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
“Laval’s story has already been told a number of times, but almost always by people with an axe to grind. Professor Warner, on the contrary, is coolly clinical in his analysis. He has sifted all the available evidence with scrupulous care and skill and has really tried to arrive at a dispassionate judgment [...] He has also made excellent use of the German archives for the war years, which have been ignored by other biographers of Laval [...]it will be hard for anyone to write a fairer or more thorough book about Laval.” — Gordon Wright, Political Science Quarterly
“Geoffrey Warner consacre un ouvrage à Pierre Laval [...] c’est le meilleur, le plus récent et le plus complet [des nombreux livres sur Pierre Laval...] un livre excellent.” — Adrienne D. Hytier, Revue d’histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale