2023-07-05 20:33:26
The child of the North, born in Dunkirk on March 18, 1930, has known several lives. Coming from a modest background living in the lower town of the city of Jean Bart, he never ceased to understand the world, convinced that man was responsible for it. Journalist, committed Catholic, novelist, Jacques Duquesne has always remained simple and willingly cheeky. Marked for life by the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940, in the midst of a debacle, he could have been a teacher, as the concern to explain pursued him, starting with the Algerian war, the first ground of his life as a journalist which began in The cross.
In 1957, he crossed the Mediterranean and discovered torture with horror. He returns with a series of seven articles titled “Algeria’s Sufferings and Hopes”. A sensational entry into the news, openly denouncing the torture and abuses of the military, which will shock many readers who let it be known.
“A large number of cases of torture are absolutely not justified by the real search for information. It has often happened, in fact, that torture is carried out prior to any interrogation as a “psychological preparation” of “suspects” who are barely suspects”he writes in the columns of The cross, January 10, 1958. Just like the enigma of evil, the war in Algeria will be the obsession of its existence. He will come back to it several times, and again in 2021, in a last book. Secret Diaries of Algeriawritten with Antoine d’Abbundo journalist at The cross.
Essayist, polemicist and novelist
The commitment of the journalist is not independent of his training within the Christian youth movements in the 1950s. He will even be general secretary of the Catholic Association of French Youth in 1954. Christianity will very early be one of favorite subjects. In 1965, he wrote a book under the title The priests and again, in 1968, Tomorrow, a Church without priests?. But this is his biography Jesusin 1994 which will arouse a lively controversy, estimating the virginal conception of Jesus by Mary “implausible” and discussing the reality of miracles. An approach analyzed at the time by Michel Kubler: “As a great journalist, Duquesne was able to draw from the best sources and surround himself with flawless documentation. But we quickly get the feeling, over the files, that he favors a psychological approach to characters and stories. » This will not prevent the sale of some 150,000 copies of “Jesus de Duquesne”, supported by a lecture tour.
Duquesne essayist, polemicist, novelist too: it is by drawing in particular from the popular vein of the people of the North with Mary Vandamme1983 Interallié prize, brought to the screen, Catherine Courage (1990) or even the saga The Heiresses in the 2000s, that it imposed itself in a mainstream register and sought to give women back their rightful place.
Life of the journalist and press owner
It remains to evoke the life of the journalist and press boss. After the first years at The cross et at L’ExpressJacques Duquesne took part in the launch of the weekly Point, of which he was for a time editor-in-chief then chairman and CEO from 1985 to 1990. Managing director of the Malesherbes-La Vie publication group (1977-1979), he moved to TF1 in 1987 without being convinced, and returned to the press written. He leaves a bibliography of nearly fifty books, novels and essays.
Attached to these northern origins, he will still be president of the Bateau Feu in Dunkirk from 1991 to 2016. “He had a sense of values and wanted to make culture as well as carnival accessible”underlines Bruno Vouters who succeeded him at the head of the national scene.
He died in his Parisian apartment on Wednesday July 5, 2023.
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