Until this moment, the lanky man in khaki had been just a voice on the radio, beamed in from London. Now the 6ft 5in figure was the embodiment of victorious France as he towered over his compatriots in the sweaty, ecstatic throng packed into the Hôtel de Ville on the banks of the Seine.

General Charles de Gaulle rarely showed emotion, but he swallowed hard on that day of wild celebrations, Friday, August 25, 1944, before he described the ordeal from which the City of Light had just emerged.

Paris had been ‘outraged… broken… martyred’. But now, he continued triumphantly, it was…