In Propaganda, Gender, and Cultural Power, Charlotte Faucher revisits the history of the French in London through the expansive and multifaceted prism of cultural diplomacy, with an emphasis on gender and class. The study starts in the 1880s, a period which saw the consolidation of the Third Republic and structuring of French migrants to Britain into a colony, and when a small but dynamic group of individuals set about promoting “true” French culture in Britain. It concludes with the Second World War–a time when “cultural diplomacy was a crucial tool” (159) for Free France, in Britain and globally. The evolutions of French cultural diplomacy in Britain–and especially in London–in the intervening decades are mapped out on key historical periods, as Belle Epoque cultural diplomacy, led by key strategic actors and embedded in upper-class and aristocratic sociabilities, gives way to male-dominated networks of academics, industrialists, bourgeois professionals, and French politicians running the key institutions of French diplomacy, and popular entertainment and culture mondaine are replaced with academic diplomacy. The First World War then throws into sharp relief the effectiveness of culture as a tool for propaganda and diplomacy, eventually leading to the professionalization and masculinization of French cultural diplomacy in Britain and the rise of the male academic as the “archetypal cultural diplomat” (145), with the 1920 creation of SOFE (Service des oeuvres françaises à l'étranger). In contrast, women are partly relegated to unofficial channels of influence, based on the assumption that men will deliver higher standards of professionalism–a claim that the book thoroughly disproves. Indeed, the Second World War evidences once again the prominent role of French women in cultural diplomacy, through three high-profile résistantes active transnationally: Yvonne Salmon, Eve Curie, and Elisabeth de Miribel. Even children partook in the Free French's propagandist efforts, as richly illustrated pages recount.

The concept of cultural diplomacy describes both “the changing content of cultural productions, but also…the shifting role of cultural policies within diplomacy” (5), revealing a degree of antagonism between its various actors, and between state and non-state efforts. The narrative weaves French migrants, exiles, and refugees and their children (especially during wars), British Francophiles, diplomats, and political elites, to gauge the conflictual development of cultural diplomacy and its intended audiences. While the key male names of Franco-British diplomacy loom large, from French ambassador to Britain Paul Cambon (1898–1920) to the director of the French Institute Denis Saurat (1924–1945) and, of course, Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), the book foregrounds inconspicuous actors and ideas–everyday cultural intermediaries such as teachers, unofficial diplomats before the creation of the French embassy in London, women even as they only had restricted access to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until the 1930s, cultural diplomacy long before the concept emerged–inscribing grassroots accounts of Franco-British life into a history of high politics.

Propaganda, Gender, and Cultural Power taps into extensive primary and secondary research and is compelling in both its overall approach and in its execution. Faucher opens fresh perspectives on both international relations and the foremost Franco-British duo, through the prism of cultural diplomacy, paying particular attention to how “diplomatic relations were sustained at civil society and at state level” (3), to the arts as an important source of French diplomatic power in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, and to the generally unheeded leadership of women in that sphere. In doing so, it brings historical depth to many landmarks, events and even feelings which are part of the fabric of Francophone life in Britain. Language teaching is thus posited as central to cultural diplomacy from the very start of the book, a marked contrast with the contemporary disaffection for French in formal British educational settings which highlights its implications for national identities, influences, and global positioning. The various institutions where this teaching was conceived and delivered–French lycées, Alliance française, French Institute, to cite just the longest-lived–feature prominently. So do their initiators, not least the fascinating cultural and diplomatic broker Marie d'Orliac (later Bohn), the head of the University of French Arts, which eventually became the French Institute in 1913. However, the study goes far beyond a limited understanding of culture as being primarily focused on language. Franco-British relations are notoriously pervaded with mutual attraction, repulsion and political rivalry, but Faucher de-sensationalizes this history by considering actors and the slow graft of cultural diplomacy, while bringing to life a teeming world of initiatives, influence, and competing visions, and the multiple sites where cultural propaganda is shaped and implemented–from the music hall to wine trading and newspapers, to a host of political, cultural, and educational institutions and associations with varying lifespans.

The book is erudite, lively, and accessible, and engages with many areas of scholarship, within a cohesive and convincing argument and narrative, as Faucher highlights the relevance of the cross-Channel diplomatic axis to a set of wider historiographic fields and questionings and entangles the diplomatic and the cultural, institutions, and individual actors, acting as a lucid and affable guide through the epochal shifts of diplomacy and the associations and personalities who make up this history.