Louis XIV - Softcover

Philippe Erlanger portrays Louis over the decades with a novelist's psychological insight. He shows the crucial effect of a childhood of neglect and humiliation, amid the horrors of civil war, on the formation of Louis' personality and his subsequent behaviour as king. The young man imbued with a fierce passion for life and love, the haughty autocrat who identified himself with the State, the creator of a spectacular style of leadership that became a tradition, the sovereign confronting death in the same inflexible manner in which he had confronted life - for more than half a century the solitary figure of Louis XIV dominated Europe.

Philippe Erlanger was born in Paris in 1903. He was a founder of the Cannes Film Festival and worked for a time for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He received several literary prizes, including the Grand Prix d'Histoire de l'Academie Francaise.