Early Life and Career
Le Roy Ladurie was born in Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais, Calvados, the son of Jacques Le Roy Ladurie, minister of Agriculture for Marshal Philippe Pétain and subsequently a resistant. The historian was educated in Caen at the Collège Saint-Joseph, in Paris at the Lycée Henri-IV and in Sceaux at the Lycée Lakanal. He was awarded an agrégation in history from the École Normale Supérieure and a doctorat ès lettres from the University of Paris. Le Roy Ladurie has taught at the Lycée de Montpellier, the University of Montpellier, the École Pratique des Haute Études in Paris, the University of Paris and at the Collège de France, where he occupied from 1973 to 1999 the chair of History of Modern Civilization and is now emeritus professor.
Le Roy Ladurie was a member of the French Communist Party (PCF) between 1945 and 1963. He left the party after doubts caused by the 1956 Hungarian Revolution became too much for him. He has since then analysed his political engagement and Communism in Ouverture, société, pouvoir: de l’Édit de Nantes à la chute du communisme (2004) and Les grands procès politiques, ou la pédagogie infernale (2002).
Le Roy Ladurie often writes for Le Nouvel Observateur, L'Express, and Le Monde newspapers and appears on French television.
Read more about this topic: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)