#Macron in trouble, 2023: 2/4: RévolutionFrançaise, by Sophie Pedder. @PedderSophie
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
@Batchelorshow
Pyrenees
#Macron in trouble, 2023: 2/4: RévolutionFrançaise, by Sophie Pedder. @PedderSophie
https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Française-Emmanuel-Macron-reinvent/dp/1472948602
The extraordinary story of how an outsider candidate—an unknown technocrat and economics minister on the fringes of French politics—made his way to the Élysée palace, with expert analysis of his first year in office.
Two years after Emmanuel Macron came from nowhere to seize the French presidency, Sophie Pedder, The Economist's Paris bureau chief, tells the story of his remarkable rise and time in office so far. In this paperback edition, published with a new foreword by the author, Pedder reflects on Macron's troubles and triumphs: his dwindling popularity: the 'gilets jaunes' protests and resulting civil unrest: his efforts to transform France and lead the global fight against climate change: the Benalla affair; his erratic relationships with Angela Merkel, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Theresa May, and the future of the European project.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batcher. It's a great pleasure to speak to Sophie |
| 0:05.7 | Petter, the Paris-Bierre chief for the Economist magazine author, Sophie Petter, of Revolution |
| 0:13.3 | François. And this is the story of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, who is extremely |
| 0:20.8 | well-educated and, in fact, graduated from the supremely important school, college, university |
| 0:28.6 | and France, that brings us all of the leadership of France. He graduated, it's called the ENA, |
| 0:37.0 | the National Administration School, where they train the leadership. But he comes from us |
| 0:43.7 | a Red Brook working class city, Amiens in the North. And Sophie introduces us in 1977 |
| 0:52.4 | with the birth of young Emmanuel Jean-Michel Federique Macron to the fact that Amiens had had |
| 0:58.0 | a communist mayor for 20 years. What is it in Amiens that the French would know immediately |
| 1:04.7 | that coming from there means you're one kind of thing? What do we understand about the town, Sophie? |
| 1:10.4 | Working town, a lot of industry in the past, industry that's closed, so a sort of sense of decline |
| 1:17.5 | on the one hand. It's also part of the sum, it's in the battlefield, so I think that's also part of its |
| 1:23.3 | identity. I think it's seen as part of an area of France that has been in decline and that has |
| 1:31.8 | struggled. This is not just smart chic suburbs of Paris or left bank intellectual milieu. It's |
| 1:44.1 | really much more an average kind of town. |
| 1:48.5 | And dad are both physicians. And dad remains a physician, you say, as the publication of this book, |
| 1:55.6 | his grandparents are even more compelling. I believe one of his grandparents, his paternal grandfather, |
| 2:01.8 | was an Englishman who married a French woman following the first wars. Do I remember that |
| 2:07.3 | correctly, Sophie? You do. He was an English, he was a butcher from the town of Bristol in England, |
| 2:13.0 | who had come over to France during the fight during the First World War and ended up marrying |
| 2:21.3 | the French, the French woman that he met there. That was part of Emmanuel Macron's |
| 2:28.0 | inherited, yeah. That's the father, but the mother and beg pardon of I mispronounced the no-gay's |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.