Maurice Druon

Maurice Druon (23 April 1918 – 14 April 2009) was a French novelist and a member of the Académie française, of which he served as “Perpetual Secretary” (chairman) between 1985 and 1999.  Maurice Druon joined the Resistance and joined London in January 1943. Attached to the “Honneur et Patrie” program of the BBC, he then wrote with his uncle Joseph Kessel the words of Chant des Partisans, to the music of a Russian song by Anna Marly. After the war, he became a successful man of letters with Les Grandes Familles (Goncourt Prize 1948) and especially the saga of the Accursed Kings, a historical novel in seven volumes published between 1955 and 1977 and which the television adaptation will make known to a very wide audience.