René de La Croix de Castries

Duc de Castries (courtesy title) · Member of the Académie française (fauteuil 2)

René de La Croix de Castries (château de la Bastide-d'Engras, near Uzès, 6 août 1908 – 17 juillet 1986), known as the “Duc de Castries”, was a historian and novelist and a member of the Académie française. From the junior branch of the La Croix de Castries family, he grew up at the château de Gaujac (Gard) and initially intended for a career in diplomacy. In 1935 he bought back the family château de Castries, which the family had owned from 1495 but which had passed to the Harcourt family. He restored it, farmed its vineyards and patiently gathered portraits, furniture and relics of his lineage, turning the site into a true conservatory of his family's history. Mayor of Castries from 1941 to 1950, he then settled in Paris and became one of the most widely read biographers of his day, specialising in the period 1750–1850: Mirabeau, Madame du Barry, Louis XVIII, La Fayette, Chateaubriand, Louis-Philippe… Elected to the Académie française on 4 mai 1972 to fauteuil 2, he presided over the Institut de France in 1982. In 1985 he gave the château and its collections to the Académie française; he died the following year.