Who was Jean Moulin? According to the official version, he was the exiled General de Gaulle's emissary to the French Resistance movements during World War II and became the political head of the Resistance in 1943. He was captured in Lyons and tortured by the Gestapo, and is believed to have died a few days later without talking. After the war his ashes were transferred to the Pantheon - France's greatest honour.;So much for the legend. But what is the truth of Jean Moulin? Patrick Marnham set out to write an uncritical biography of a very brave man but his research uncovered a far more fascinating and ambivalent figure. It took Marnham from the Provencal village where Jean Moulin spent his childhood, through the scenes of his career and his bohemian life as an artist in Montparnasse, right up to the doctor's room in Caluire where he was sitting when Klaus Barbie's Gestapo burst through the door and where, in 1987, Marnham interviewed the doctor himself. His biographical detection discloses a plot within a plot and summarizes the evidence as to who actually killed Jean Moulin. He also reveals how a heroic legend was manufactured to take the place of a heroic life.
