Biography
Private life and education
The son of a diplomat, [2] Gilbert Grellet graduated in 1969 from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales, France's foremost business school. He began his career at AFP in 1972 following two years of military cooperation in Mauritania, from 1969 to 1971, where he served as an adviser to the BCEAO.
Gilbert Grellet is the father of the investor and businesswoman Vanessa Grellet.
Career at Agence France-Presse
Gilbert Grellet joined AFP in 1972, where he began his career with several positions. From 1972 to 1977, he served as the economic and financial correspondent in New York City. He then moved to Brasilia, where he was the bureau chief from 1977 to 1979. Following this, he returned to Paris to head the economic desk from 1979 to 1983.
He was subsequently appointed Washington bureau chief, a position he held from 1983 to 1987 when he interviewed the President of the United States Ronald Reagan. [3] Gilbert Grellet then took on the role of world wide commercial director of AFP from 1987 to 1995, followed by his tenure as director for Europe and Africa from 1995 to 2001, and director for external relations and partnerships from 2001 to 2005.
After serving as the Madrid Bureau Chief [4] from 2005 to 2010, he returned to Paris to lead a new publishing department until his retirement in mid-2016.
From 1995 to 2001, Gilbert Grellet also held the position of non-executive chairman of AFX News, a financial news company based in London, which was a joint venture of AFP and the Financial Times.
Literary contributions
Gilbert Grellet is also an accomplished author. His first book, Le Souffle Austral, co-written with Hervé Guilbaud, was published in 1988 by Flammarion. This thriller, which was awarded the prize for the best thriller published in France that year, was translated into several languages, including English, and released in the United States under the title Wind of Death by Berg Publishers.
In 1990, Gilbert Grellet, in collaboration with René Centassi, published Tous les jours de mieux en mieux through Robert Laffont. This book focuses on the life and work of French pharmacist Emile Coué, a pioneer of modern positive thinking. Gilbert Grellet has also authored historical works such as Aux Frontières du Monde, which explores the significant global explorations at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, based on articles from the French geographical review Le Tour du Monde , akin to the National Geographic magazine.
One of his more recent works, Un été impardonnable, edited by Albin Michel in 2016, examines the first three months of the Spanish Civil War and the controversial non-intervention policy adopted by the main Western democracies (the United Kingdom, France, and the United States), which refused to assist the Spanish Republic in the face of a military uprising supported by Hitler and Mussolini. This book features a foreword by Manuel Valls, the 98th Prime Minister of France of Spanish descent [5] · [6] · [7] · [8] · [9] · [10] · [11] · [12] · [13] ·. [14]
Michel Serres was a French philosopher, theorist and writer. His works explore themes of science, time and death, and later incorporated prose.
Philippe Delorme is a French historian and journalist, whose articles have appeared in Point de Vue, Point de Vue Histoire, and Valeurs actuelles, among others.
Les Temps Modernes was a French journal, founded by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Its first issue was published in October 1945. It was named after the 1936 film by Charlie Chaplin.
Cité internationale universitaire de Paris or the Cité universitaire is a university campus, a private park and foundation located in Paris, France. Since 1925, it has provided general and public services, including the maintenance of several dozen residences housing around 6,000 students and visiting academics in the Île-de-France region. Officially recognized as a foundation of public interest, the CIUP promotes exchanges between students from around the world in a spirit of tolerance.
Geneviève de Gaulle-Anthonioz was a member of the French Resistance in World War II, during which she was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. After the war, she was a human rights defender and president of the charity organisation ATD Quart Monde for poverty reduction. Her uncle was General Charles de Gaulle, who served as President of France from 1959 to 1969.
Elements from the French Armed Forces used deliberate torture during the Algerian War (1954–1962), creating an ongoing public controversy. Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a renowned French historian, estimated that there were "hundreds of thousands of instances of torture" by the French military in Algeria.
The General Directorate for Internal Security is a French security agency. It is charged with counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, countering cybercrime and surveillance of potentially threatening groups, organisations and social phenomena.
Bruno Daniel Marie Paul Retailleau is a French politician who has served as Minister of the Interior since September 2024.
The 2011 French Socialist Party presidential primary was the first open primary of the French Socialist Party and Radical Party of the Left for selecting their candidate for the 2012 presidential election. The filing deadline for primary nomination papers was fixed at 13 July 2011 and six candidates competed in the first round of the vote. On election day, 9 October 2011, no candidate won 50 percent of the vote, and the two candidates with the most votes contested a runoff election on 16 October 2011. François Hollande ultimately won the primary, defeating Martine Aubry.
Sylvain Tesson is a French writer and traveller born in Paris. He has engaged in a number of unusual travels and expeditions which are the basis for his books. Among his most successful works are The Consolations of the Forest (2011), about a project to live alone in a Siberian cabin for six months and The Art of Patience (2019), about the quest for snow leopards in Tibet. For the latter book, he received the Prix Renaudot.
Paul-Frédéric Rollet (1875–1941) was a French Army Général who led in the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion RMLE, and was the 1st Inspector of the Foreign Legion, a post which he created under his intentions. Rollet accumulated 41 years of military service out of which 33 were in the Legion and also planned the 100th anniversary of the legion on Camerone day of 30 April 1931. Consequently, he was responsible for creating many of the Legion's current traditions.
Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron is a French politician who has been the 25th and current president of France since 2017 and ex officio one of the two co-princes of Andorra. He previously was Minister of Economics, Industry and Digital Affairs under President François Hollande from 2014 to 2016 and Deputy Secretary-General to the President from 2012 to 2014. He has been a member of Renaissance since he founded it in 2016.
Bernard Henri Maris, also known as "Oncle Bernard", was a French economist, writer and journalist who was also a shareholder in Charlie Hebdo magazine. He was murdered on 7 January 2015, during the shooting at the headquarters of the magazine in Paris.
Myriam El Khomri is a former French politician of the Socialist Party (PS) who served as Minister of Labour in the government of Prime Minister Manuel Valls from 2015 to 2017.
Mika Feldman de Etchebéhère was an Argentine militant anarchist and Marxist. She served as captain of the POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, and was also active in the anarcha-feminist organization, Mujeres Libres.
Émile Servan-Schreiber was a French journalist. He was the co-founder of Les Échos. He was the author of several books.
Le Tour du monde, nouveau journal des voyages was a French weekly travel journal first published in January 1860. It also bore the name of Le Tour du monde, journal des voyages et des voyageurs (1895–1914).
The 15th constituency of Paris is a French legislative constituency in the Paris département (75). Like the other 576 French constituencies, it elects one MP using the two-round system. The constituency is in the East of the city, but before the 2010 redistricting of French legislative constituencies, it was based in the west, covering areas now in the 14th and 4th constituencies.
L'Œuvre Française, also called L'Œuvre, was a French nationalist, néo-Pétainist and antisemitic far-right movement founded in 1968 by Pierre Sidos. Inspired by the "semi-fascist" regimes of Vichy France, Francoist Spain and the Estado Novo, L'Œuvre Française was—until its dissolution by the authorities in 2013—the oldest nationalist association still active in France.
The villa Sésini is a torture center established in El Biar during the Algerian war in the city of Algiers.
