STARTING POINTS FOR DISCUSSION

1. In Bad Faith the history of Vichy France is told through an account of the lives of Louis Darquier, his wife Myrtle Jones and their daughter Anne. Does this method of using a grossly dysfunctional family as the backdrop to terrible national events succeed in creating a credible historical portrait?

2. Children are an important element in Bad Faith. From the very beginning when the author appears as a child, through the story of Anne Darquier, to the story of the deportation of Jewish children. It is a universal story of power and powerlessness, of innocence and betrayal. Do you feel this to be true?

3. The author places emphasis on words, truth, and memory. Louis and Myrtle Darquier are arch fantasists, they cannot see, or tell the truth. How do their lies and greed connect with the words and deeds of Marshal Pétain, Pierre Laval and the French Cardinals? Compare them to Churchill and de Gaulle, fighting against them in England.

4. Why do you think so many writers and journalists as well as politicians were so involved in the destruction of the Jews and in collaboration with the Nazis?

5. Discuss the effect of the First World War on men who – like Louis Darquier – later became anti-Semites and collaborators. Bad Faith assesses the Second World War as a continuation of the First, and finally connects the terrible deaths of over 75,000 French Jews, to the Israeli- Palestine conflict today. Do you agree with this?

6. Louis Darquier claimed that ‘in Auschwitz they only gassed lice. After the war, the Nazi ambassador to France, Otto Abetz, who had known and funded Louis Darquier for years, said, ‘I must have seen Darquier de Pellepoix at least once during official visits. But I have no exact memory of the event.’ Whilst the French nation, for many decades, has acknowledged the worst excesses of the Vichy state, men like Louis Darquier have remained forgotten. Why is this? How does this connect with the idea of justice, memory and forgetting, in Bad Faith.

7. It has been said that the tragic story of Bad Faith can also be darkly comic. In what way does the author use this method to connect the banality of human actions with evil acts?

8. Much of the support for French fascism and collaboration with the Nazis came from those who ran French perfume, cosmetics,alcohol -and some fashion houses.Will you still feel easy buying L'Oreal beauty products,Taittinger champagne, Chanel makeup, Hennessy brandy?