> even assuming that the
> England he inhabited by choice for the last half-century of his life
> had offered him a royalist movement to join.

It did provide such an opportunity, actually. The abdication crisis of 1936
split English opinion, and some of Edward VIII's supporters wanted a
bigger public role for their embattled monarch.
Eliot wrote an (uncollected) article in New English Weekly (25 Feb 1937)
where he distanced himself from those who held 'a conception of the monarchy
in which the hereditary claimant to our allegiance should double the role of
duce or fuerher'.
In other words, Eliot chose to defend the institution of the monarchy
against the king.

Eliot's connection with the Action Française aroused many suspicions, of
course. In the review that was referred to recently, Orwell wrote that the
emphasis on defeat in 'East Coker' was a sign of 'literary Pétainism'. But
he did not press the point, and stopped short of accusing Eliot of sympathy
for collaborationists.

> Jacek Niecko wrote:
> >
> > I suspect that Mr Villepin would have felt very comfortable as foreign
> > minister of the "government" at Vichy.

Whatever his faults (and I'd say there are quite a few), Chirac was the
first French president to acknowledge the French responsibility for the
Vichy regime. The recent flurry of e-mails about French affairs was not just
thoroughly unpleasant, it also showed that our trolls and nutcases are as
abysmally ignorant about France as they are about most topics discussed on
this list.

Yours,

Raphaël
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