NOTRE-DAME
AGNES POIRIER
A great scream of ‘Non’ went up from the crowd
THE SOUL OF FRANCE
Oneworld, 219pp, £16.99
It is only a year since Paris’s great cathedral of Notre-dame went up in flames. Agnès Poirier has produced what Jon Henley in the Observer called ‘a slim, vivid and engrossing history both of that night and of the edifice she calls “always far more than just a cathedral … The face of civilisation, and the soul of a nation”.’
In the Financial Times, Victor Mallet praised the ‘nail-biting’ first chapter in which Poirier recounts the events of that night through interviews with many who were there, including ‘the 50 men from the Grimp, a special unit for dangerous operations. It was they who were sent to control the inferno at the top of the north tower, where the fire was threatening to topple the whole structure.’ A great scream of ‘Non’ went up from the crowd as the 750-tonne spire crashed through the medieval stone vaulting of the nave.
Richard Morrison in the Times was gripped by Poirier’s unfolding account. ‘We follow Marie-hélène Didier, the heritage curator in charge of France’s religious art, as she dashes into the smoke-filled nave at the height of the fire to carry priceless paintings and artefacts to safety. With her is Laurent Prades, Notre-dame’s general manager, who charges across Paris on a bike because he is the only
man with the code to the bulletproofglass safe at the far end of the cathedral that contains the Catholic world’s most treasured relic: the artefact believed by the faithful to be Christ’s crown of thorns.’