We talked about it recently in these pages: in two generations, sales of history books have collapsed. Has a certain postmodern amnesia won out? As André Castelot turns in his grave, interest in the past, far from weakening, just manifests itself differently. For example through the growing success of Philippe Collin’s podcasts. The one on Léon Blum was listened to by 2.4 million French people. The latest, on Louis-Ferdinand Céline, already has more than 1.5 million listeners. At 49 years old, Collin has established himself as one of the best passers in current history, regardless of the format. Since the book’s release in 2018, 150,000 copies of the book have been sold. Journey of Marcel Grob, his ambitious comic strip dedicated to one of his great-uncles, a “despite us” forcefully enlisted in the Waffen-SS. With The Ritz Bartender (Albin Michel), he tries his hand at a novel for the first time. Around Frank Meier, the bartender Austrian (and Jewish) from the famous palace on Place Vendôme, attracted all the Nazi elite of the Occupation as well as Ernst Jünger, Sacha Guitry and Coco Chanel. Mixing in a shaker his knowledge of the period and his taste for psychology, all stretched out in a skillfully constructed story, Collin creates a cocktail that should intoxicate regulars of his podcasts.
Unfortunately, it was not at the Ritz bar that we found the author to interview him, but more soberly at his publisher’s. As we suspected, his passion for history, and particularly for the Second World War, dates back to childhood: “I am convinced that every professional or amateur historian has deep down reasons to be attached to such and such a period. It turns out that I knew very little about my grandparents, three of them having died when I was very young. However, my two grandfathers had been in stalags. I began to imagine their lives, how they had been arrested, how they had arrived in Germany… The older I got, the more it fascinated me.” Son of a submarine officer who was a member of the first crew of the Formidable, Collin grew up mainly in Brittany. In 1997, he completed a master’s degree in history on purification at the University of Brest, with a Finistère perspective, working for the occasion on 5,000 individual files. Will he go all the way to a doctorate? Doubt invaded him: “I dreamed of becoming a historian, it was a fantasy – but there is real life. My university was full of doctoral students, I realized that the path would be long, uncertain, strewn with pitfalls. I come from a fairly modest background and my parents had already helped me a lot. Finally, at 22, I was also tempted by another adventure… I left for Paris.”
After going through the Defense historical service in Vincennes, where he met Gérard Lefort, he arrived at France Inter in 1999. He began as a man in the shadows, a small hand, making files with Marie Colmant and Laurent Bon : “These very gifted people taught me how to work, how to find angles, how to develop radio writing. It nourished me, even if deep down I kept my desire for a story.” Problem: at France Inter, in the year 2000, if the mythical Tribune of history stopped, Patrice Gélinet hosts the show Two thousand years of history. Among the neighbors of France Culture, Emmanuel Laurentin presents The Factory of History. In short, there is no room for a 25-year-old stranger. Collin is champing at the bit. Thanks to Laurent Bon, he participates in Grand Journal on Canal +: “It was very rhythmic, clipped… I said to myself that we should apply that to the radio: find a faster way to pace.”
The summer of 2005 allowed Collin to take off. Bernard Chérèze, then program director of France Inter, entrusted him with a Sunday show, Like a hurricane. Despite a tricky time slot, in the middle of the afternoon, it was a success. At the start of the school year, here is Collin at the helm of Panic at Mangin PalaceSunday from 11 a.m. to noon: “It’s a historically important slot. At the beginning I emptied the room: the number of listeners went from 900,000 to 400,000. In the next survey, we came back at 900,000. In 2010, we ended up at 1.8 million. I had proven that I knew how to make a weird, offbeat radio station that found its audience.”
“A smuggler eager to serve historical knowledge”
While continuing to work for France Inter, he worked extensively on his comic strip The Journey of Marcel Grobwhich will be released in the fall of 2018 and will become a bestseller: “I have always sought to create intergenerational dialogues. I see it as one of the keys to society. On the radio, I like to mix references. BD is a popular medium, and I liked investing in this medium. By entrusting my project to Futuropolis editions, I knew that I would have a beautiful object, which would become part of families – it would be on the coffee table, a teenager or a teenager. a young adult could get hold of it… That’s what happened.”
The black hole of 2020 is delaying the deadline, but something clicked in the mind of Yann Chouquet, in charge of the France Inter grid. In 2021, its radio is a partner of the exhibition Napoleon at the Grande Halle de la Villette. He has on hand an animator keen on history, capable of writing a well-documented comic strip of nearly 200 pages. Chouquet commissions a series of nine forty-five minute episodes from Collin: Napoleon, the man who never dies. Collin finally reaches the Grail. A year later, he proposed a project that was apparently less successful: “I come from a rather Gaullist family, but I really like Léon Blum – at 18, he was the subject of my very first lecture at university. I’m not partisan, I stay away from ideology. I simply said to myself: the left is not doing well, it is fractured, Blum is a totem, it can work… I spent nine months preparing my series. Léon Blum, a heroic life. It went away very quickly, in a flash. It changed the status of the series. The press seized on it, on the left then on the right. I found my style, and since then I have been even better staffed.”
Each historic Collin podcast now has 10 episodes of almost an hour each. A counter-programming compared to tweets in 140 characters: “I have often been told that the radio is going to die. But in the car, at sports, in the kitchen, when they are DIYing, people listen to podcasts. That’s the triumphant return of radio!” When asked what tradition he is part of, Collin cites René Rémond, Pascal Ory and Henry Rousso, without forgetting Christian Ingrao, Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon and Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau (his “mentor”). Not a snob, he also admits “great admiration” for Alain Decaux: “He was both popular and scientific. He knew how to create drama in his story. He grabbed you and never let go. I try to have the same intensity.” While waiting for his next podcast in June (on Marshal Leclerc), he adds a string to his bow with this novel, The Ritz Bartender, where he explores his obsession with the 1940s with the addition of “a personal projection”. He is also putting on a participatory show in the provinces on Blum, with Charles Berling in the lead role. When will he definitively be a historian? “I would love to do a thesis when I am old, retired. For now, I remain in my place: that of a smuggler eager to serve historical knowledge.”
The Ritz Bartender, by Philippe Collin. Albin Michel, 409 p., €21.90.
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