Gregor Dallas, Profile

Gregor Dallas, a British citizen, knows something about frontiers and cultural differences. He has spent one third of his life in Britain, a third in the United States and a third in France. He attended Sherborne School in Dorset, received an AB (economics and history) at the University of California at Berkeley, and an AM and PhD (European Economic History) at Rutgers University, New Jersey, where he taught. He also taught at Smith College, Massachusetts (one of America's 'Seven Sisters'). He is an acclaimed historian of the ending of wars. He writes about both the famous and the unknown, and likes to put historical events in their physical place. In 2006 he set up a French section of the Society of Authors (SOAF) and, pursuing his lifelong interest in local history, he currently organising a 'Local History Workshop' in the French royal town of Dreux. He is also chairman of the Constitution Study Group of the British Conservatives in Paris (BCiP). His next major work will be a study of the post-war collapse of European empires as related to the course of the Cold War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Each book by Gregor Dallas feeds into the next so that when considered as a whole the work presents a complete and novel view of history. Dallas's books are as follows:

The Imperfect Peasant Economy: The Loire Country 1800-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1982; paperback, 2004)
A geographical, regional study which shows how a household economy works and survives in an age of technological change and crisis. The book provides the basis of Dallas's main themes: survival in change; adaptation in movement; the identification of people and events with real places.
-- "Millions of peasants in France (and elsewhere in Europe) preferred to remain in the countryside wedded to a traditional way of life which historians like Gregor Dallas find pleasing to contemplate and explain." -- P.K. O'Brien, Times Literary Supplement

At the Heart of a Tiger: Clemenceau and His World 1842-1929 (Macmillan, 1993)
A book about the French wartime prime minister whose life spanned a rural world in the age of King Louis-Philippe to the industrial war of 1914-18. Clemenceau was an enormous inspiration for both Churchill and de Gaulle. The book tells the stories of both the man and the worlds he came to symbolise.
-- "Dallas gives the impression of a man, Clemenceau, colliding with the various worlds he inhabited and drawn to politics by necessity… This is an interesting and convincing study of a man who searched for political decency in a world where we can now see there was little." -- Francis Hodgson, The Guardian

The War-and-Peace Trilogy The trilogy studies in depth the transition from war to peace in 1815, 1918 and 1945. Many histories study the causes of war, few reveal how wars have ended. Yet it is easy to start a war; all you need is a gun. How, after a reign of savagery and barbarism does one re-establish the semblance of civilisation? Here lie stories of super-human effort and heroism in its proper sense.

1. 1815: The Roads to Waterloo (Richard Cohen, 1996 Henry Holt, 1997; paperback Pimlico, 2002)
   The book tells, essentially, the story of seventeen months, from April 1814 to August 1815 that saw two sieges of Paris, a complete revision of Europe's political frontiers, an international Congress in Vienna, a civil war in Italy and an international war in Belgium.
   -- 'This is diplomatic history de luxe. It shows us the vital basics of Europe before and after Waterloo. At the same time it builds upon these basics an extraordinarily vivid world of real diplomats, real dialogues, real diaries, with the real wives and women.' -- Elizabeth Longford, author of Wellington
2. 1918: War and Peace (John Murray, 2000; Overlook, 2002; paperback Pimlico 2002)
   The book traces the transition from war to peace across Europe. It follows the movement of armies over the northern plains, their collapse, their demobilisation, and the effect this had on the material life of people.
   -- 'It's quite unlike any history book I know… As a way of writing history it succeeds triumphantly. Like all the best history books it changes the way you see things. 1918 will never seem the same again.' -- Jane Ridley, The Spectator
3. Poisoned Peace: 1945, The War That Never Ended (John Murray, 2005; Yale University Press, 2005; Murray mass paperback, 2006)
   The book recreates the seismic shifts that concluded the Second World War and their lasting impact on the political landscape of Europe today. There was no real peace settlement in 1945 and the shape of Europe was determined simply by military force, dividing it into two halves which corresponded neither to geography, culture nor history.
   -- 'The consequences of the war, Dallas rightly argues, are shaping our lives still… His approach is thematic, eclectic and discursive, his book divided into sections headed Armies, Seasons, People and Europe. It reads like a conversation with a sympathetic guide who has a sure eye for paradox, the unexpected detail and the almost forgotten.' -- Alan Judd, Daily Telegraph
4. Metrostop Paris: History from the City's Heart (John Murray, 2008; Walker Books, 2008). Travelling around Paris on the city's métro system, the narrator recounts stories about the city's history. The book includes visits to Paris's catacombs at "Hell's Gate"; to the literary cafés and old jazz cellars of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Prés; to the seventeenth-century alleys of the Marais; as well as trips to the Palais-Royal at the time of the Revolution, and the world of opera at the time of Claude Debussy. Through the eyes of the existentialist philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, Dallas describes the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War and the intellectual "wars" that immediately followed. Travelling from metrostop to metrostop the reader is gradually made aware of the link between music, painting, sculpture, philosophy, politics and history.

One book by Gregor Dallas is currently in production:

The Imperial Fates: The Collapse of the European Empires and the End of Communism -- Europe since 1945. The book relates the departure of the European Powers from the 'Third World' to the Cold War of the first two 'worlds' and the eventual collapse of the Communist bloc in Europe after 1989. It is a book which will explore contemporary meanings and experiences of 'liberty', and define the physical frontiers of "globalisation".