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One of his first acts was to invite the chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, to Colombey, where these two old men created a new Europe. His predecessor Mollet had already forged a European Economic Community. Initially de Gaulle was suspicious but a partnership with Adenauer placed France at the centre of an increasingly federal Europe. He kept Britain out with a haughty ‘Non!’ – and America at a distance, while he created France’s own nuclear force de frappe.

His priority was Algeria, where he surprised the colons, coolly betraying Algérie Française and granting Algeria independence. ‘We move,’ insisted the president, ‘or we die.’ In response, in April 1959, generals, paratroopers and Foreign Legionaries took over central Algiers, while at home the army planned to seize power. Addressing the nation in uniform, de Gaulle denounced this ‘handful of retired generals … We see the state flouted, the nation defied, our power degraded … Alas! Alas! Alas!’ He added, ‘Look where France risks going, compared to what she is in the process of becoming.’ The brutality intensified in Algeria and France; the FLN launched terrorist attacks in Paris; the pied-noir terrorist organization, the OAS, tried to kill de Gaulle. On 22 April 1961, French generals launched a coup d’état in Algiers against the French president. Soon afterwards French terrorists tried to kill him with a bomb. A year later on 22 August 1962, de Gaulle’s Citroën was ambushed by terrorists with a bullet narrowly missing his head. In Paris, on 17 October 1961, French police attacked an Algerian demonstration with such savagery that over fifty were killed, an atrocity unparalleled in any western democracy.

‘Napoleon said that in love,’ remarked de Gaulle, ‘the only victory is flight. In decolonization too, the only victory is to leave.’ On 1 July 1962, Algeria became independent. Yet if France was to remain great, the general said, ‘It is thanks to Africa.’

The general placed his éminence grise Foccart in charge of Françafrique, and Foccart duly became the godfather of the Francophone autocrats, most of whom worshipped de Gaulle. For thirty-five years under four presidents, Foccart policed African politics, sending in French troops and spies whenever French-backed autocrats were threatened. ‘Let’s put an end to this comedy,’ de Gaulle said to Foccart, who ordered troops into Gabon. When African dictators faked their elections, they were told, ‘The General finds 99.8 per cent a bit too much.’ In 1966, in the Central African Republic, a murderous officer, Jean-Bedél Bokassa, who worshipped de Gaulle as ‘papa’, seized power: Foccart advised that he was ‘reliable’.

‘Yes,’ answered de Gaulle, ‘but an idiot.’ Bokassa was backed by France as he crowned himself a Napoleonic emperor: only after thirteen years of tyranny, when he murdered hundreds of schoolchildren, did French troops remove him.^*

There was success too: Papa Houphouët did not expel French colonialists, praised ‘the human relationship between the French and Africans’ and ruled for thirty-three years as a French-backed autocrat, masterfully cooperating with French presidents. He was so close to de Gaulle that he helped draft the 1958 constitution. Houphouët, accompanied by his beautiful, free-spirited wife Marie-Thérèse, twenty-five years younger than Le Vieux, frequently saw de Gaulle and Foccart (the latter was godfather to their adopted children). The two Frenchmen backed Houphouët even when in old age he moved the Ivorian capital to his home village, where he built a cathedral larger than St Peter’s. It was said its French architect became too close to Marie-Thérèse: he died soon afterwards in a helicopter crash. Unembarrassed by his wealth – ‘People are surprised that I like gold; it’s simply that I was born in it’ – Houphouët helped Foccart overthrow Communist leaders all over Africa. Even in the twenty-first century, French troops were fighting in west Africa and presiding over successions. Such was France decolonization: ‘Everything had to change,’ writes Julian Jackson, ‘so everything could stay the same.’^*

Britain’s world-weary, unflappable new prime minister, Harold Macmillan, did things very differently – with a dance.

BURNING SPEARS: KENYATTA, NKRUMAH AND BARACK OBAMA (SENIOR)

On 18 November 1961, the first independent ruler of British Africa asked an English woman to dance the ‘high life’ shuffle at a ball held at Ghana’s State House – formerly the slave castle Fort Christiansborg. The occasion, the location, the characters could not have been more fitting for this moment, which marked a new era in the relations between Europe and Africa. She was Queen Elizabeth II, aged thirty-five, beaming in a bare-shouldered dress; he was the fifty-one-year-old president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, exuberant in black tie.