Great European Lives

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of photographer Robert Doisneau, a man who portrayed Paris to the world and captured one of its most famous and romantic images. When a teenage Robert Doisneau first took a camera onto the streets of Paris he was so cripplingly shy that all he came back with were pictures of cobblestones. Gradually he […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on a humble Greek hero who fulfilled his nation’s ancient yearning. Spyridon Louis slept fitfully on the night of April 9, 1896. It wasn’t so much down to pre-race nerves as the bed bugs that riddled the mattress on which he’d been billeted at Marathon for the night. He was sure Pheidippides had […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of tightrope walker Karl Wallenda, a man tailed by tragedy. A pretty good crowd for a Tuesday, Karl Wallenda thought. Some 7,000 people had filled the Michigan State Fairgrounds in Detroit that night in January 1962 to see the Great Wallendas and the show was going well as it reached its […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of Iolanda Balaș, an extraordinary athlete who dominated her sport, despite the petty interferences of her country’s communist authorities. It rained in Rome on September 8, 1960, a light, persistent afternoon drizzle that drenched the crowd at a packed Stadio Olimpico and saw athletes and officials alike drifting ethereally around the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the astonishing film CV of Max von Sydow. In the summer of 1959 Max von Sydow was attending the Cannes Film Festival. Two years earlier The Seventh Seal, his first high-profile starring role and arguably the best of his collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman, had picked up the Cannes jury’s Special Prize […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles Marguerite Duras, an author whose career was profoundly influenced by a fleeting glance at a stranger. In 1924 a new regional governor arrived at Vinh Long, a small city in the Mekong River delta in what is now Vietnam but was then part of French Indochina. He came from a previous posting in Laos […]

He is best known as Commandant Eric Lassard in the Police Academy films, but, as CHARLIE CONNELLY reports, actor George Gaynes had an incredibly cosmopolitan childhood in Europe, and an eventful Second World War career. Celebrity came late to George Gaynes. Arguably best known for his role as the amiable simpleton Commandant Eric Lassard in the […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the French star Simone Simon, whose Hollywood career was overshadowed by a court case. Sitting in the courtroom during the summer of 1938 Simone Simon looked anything but the glamorous transatlantic film star. In a simple coat and hat and flat shoes she watched the proceedings with an increasing sense of mortified […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the Austrian singer Falco, a man never able to quite escape his demons. Ilse Kraus might have been 75 years old but there was no way she was missing the funeral. She joined thousands of others in solemn procession to Vienna’s vast, sprawling Zentralfriedhof to follow the coffin, carried to its final […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of Astrid Lindgren, creator of a children’s classic. It’s nearly two decades since the death of Astrid Lindgren but in her Stockholm apartment at Dalagatan 46 it still looks as if she’s just stepped out for a moment. A lightweight jacket dangles from a coathanger in the hall. A typewriter sits […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the remarkable story of Helga Weyhe, a shopkeeper who operated in gentle defiance of both the Nazis and the communists, to satisfy her customers… unless they liked detective stories. There’s a tangible stillness hanging over Salzwedel, a small town halfway between Berlin and Hamburg. Time seems to pass more slowly there, emphasised by a […]

Salvador Dalí’s talent for self-publicity was exceeded only by his gifts as an artist, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. On the evening of Wednesday July 1, 1936, Salvador Dalí prepared to address a crowd gathered at the New Burlington Galleries in London’s Mayfair. The three-week International Surrealist Exhibition was in its final days and had already caused quite a […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the sculptor and painter, starting on the evening that would change his outlook and output. The epiphany came one cold night in a fleapit newsreel theatre. Alberto Giacometti spent the Second World War in Geneva and had just returned to Paris in the winter of 1945 when he ducked into a cinema […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY reports on the life of Rudolf Nureyev, a figure drawn into Cold War politics and known for his appalling behaviour as well as his supreme gifts. 1961 brought an extra chill to the Cold War. In January outgoing US president Dwight D. Eisenhower had severed links with Cuba and in March Britain convicted the […]

Remembering Conny Plank, the music producer who helped define an essentially European sound. There are music producers who become famous in their own right. Joe Meek, Rick Rubin, Jerry Wexler, Stephen Street, Quincy Jones: most of us could probably reel off a list of mixing desk maestros who have helped change or define the sound […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the life of Andrei Sakharov – a hero of the USSR who became one of its fiercest critics. On the day he died Andrei Sakharov had spent many hours in the Supreme Soviet, making his case with a characteristic combination of passionate enthusiasm and forensically detailed argument. While he welcomed the perestroika measures introduced by […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the thinker Hannah Arendt. In 1960 Hannah Arendt noticed that Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, was due to stand trial in Israel the following year. A decade earlier Arendt had published her groundbreaking book Origins of Totalitarianism, in which she examined the roots in anti-Semitism and 19th […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the extraordinary life and tragic death of Hélène Boucher. Yermenonville is a small village to the west of Paris, home to no more than 600 people. Its cemetery is typical of small churchyards across Europe: small, walled, and with headstones of various vintage where you’ll come across the same three or four surnames dating […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the actress María Casares, wrenched from a privileged, happy childhood, to the uncertainty of a life in exile and a career characterised by a constant desire to challenge herself. María Casares could never be accused of making things easy for herself. Renowned as one of the great tragediennes of the European stage and […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on Rene Goscinny, the French comic editor and writer, who co-created the Astérix comic book series. On January 20 this year a statue was unveiled in Paris on a patch of grass near the junction of Rue de Boulainvilliers and Rue Singer. It’s unassuming, some might say underwhelming: a podgy middle-aged man in […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY on the poet responsible for a tragically slim collection of some of the finest verse in the English language. One hundred years ago this week a slim hardback volume of poetry was published in London by Chatto & Windus. Six shillings bought you a collection of 23 poems and a portrait of their […]

For all his brilliance on the bike, Jacques Anquetil remained a remote rider. CHARLIE CONNELLY reports. The 1964 Tour de France was the first broadcast live on television. Until then, watching the Tour had involved standing at the roadside waiting for the riders to flash past in a whirring, panting blur of colour. Now, viewers […]

Charlie Connelly looks at the life of Henry Dunant. In 1859 Henry Dunant was in a state of excitement. A decade earlier the 31-year-old Swiss had completed his education with modest results and joined a bank, apparently destined for an unspectacular career in currency exchange before an 1853 business trip to North Africa opened up […]

It was a cold evening in Paris on February 12, 1926, when the cream of city society made their way to the Salle des Agriculteurs on Rue d’Athènes, all cloche hats, fox furs, buttonhole carnations and clouded breath. When the doors had closed and everyone was seated, the lights dimmed and applause drowned out the […]

The screaming sounded otherworldly, inhuman even, and drew people living on the Ile Saint-Louis on the Seine in the centre of Paris to their windows. After a while they saw two burly men in caps and overalls struggling in the doorway of one of the apartment buildings, trying to wrestle a middle-aged woman towards a […]

They made a curious trio, sitting around a table in the Chez Carrere nightclub just off the Champs Elysées sipping champagne and making smalltalk. There was the young woman, barely a month after her 22nd birthday, in a blue evening dress, white pearl necklace and white fur cape alongside her husband of six months, a […]

“I am not trying to boast, but I have to admit that for an uneducated son of an immigrant I could have done far worse,” said Charles Aznavour. Those born without privilege tend to appreciate success more than those on whom privilege is bestowed. Raised without a safety net they are also conscious of how […]

“Dio mio, you Americans are crazy. Fly six, eight thousand miles. Talk to Magnani. Why? I cannot win Academy Award. Is impossible.” It was the early spring of 1956 and Anna Magnani had just set Hollywood alight with her performance as Serafina Delle Rose in a screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo the […]