Emmanuel de Waresquiel, born 1957, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (ENS - Paris) and currently professor at the highly selective École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE - Paris), is a historian, biographer and essayist. He has published around 20 books, several of which have won prizes (France Television, Ambassadors, Académie Française, Deux Magots, Jean d’Ormesson, etc.) and around a hundred scientific articles. He works and writes about periods ranging from the end of the Ancien Régime to the constitutional monarchies of the 19th century: Ancien Régime, the Revolution, Empire and Restorations. He approaches his subjects from different angles, either as biography by choosing his characters depending on what they have to say about the periods they lived through (Talleyrand, Fouché, Marie-Antoinette and soon Jeanne du Barry), or as an essay (Sept Jours, Cent Jours, Penser la Restauration).
He attaches great importance to the writing of history and the relationships of a period and memories that his subjects bring to the era. He is also author of several literary essays on writers and death (Fins de partie), on Stendhal (J’ai tant vu le soleil), chronicles on past-present relationships (Le temps de s’en apercevoir, etc.) and memories (Voyage autour de mon enfance).
Language spoken: French
Photo credit: ARR