The Beginning of the End

In May 1968, France stood on the verge of full-blooded revolution. Here a rhythmic, vivid evocation from eyewitness Angelo Quattrocchi is complemented by Tom Nairn’s cool and elegant appraisal to tell the astonishing story of those heady days. Paris is a seething battlefield of barricades, burning cars and CS gas. De Gaulle’s riot police publicly inform him that their loyalty can no longer be taken for granted. Meanwhile students and millions of young striking workers on the streets raise ideas that had previously been the sole province of radical philosophers: “To forbid is forbidden”; “Be reasonable ... Demand the impossible”; “Freedom is the consciousness of our desires.”“An unconsciously situationist text.”—Guy DebordAnarchist and poet, Angelo Quattrocchi (1945–2009) reported from London, Paris and the US for Italian newspapers in the 1960s and 1970s and subsequently worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC, Channel 4, and Italian television. His books include The Beginning of the End: France, May 1968, What Happened, Why It Happened with Tom Nairn.

Tom Nairn‘s many books include The Break-up of Britain, Faces of Nationalism, After Britain, and The Enchanted Glass. He writes for, among others, New Left Review and the London Review of Books.

Tariq Ali is a writer and filmmaker. He has written more than a dozen books on world history and politics—including Pirates of the Caribbean, Bush in Babylon, The Clash of Fundamentalisms and The Obama Syndrome—as well as five novels in his Islam Quintet series and scripts for the stage and screen. He is an editor of the New Left Review and lives in London.