French minister criticised over memoirs written while Covid crisis raged

Bruno La Maire said he found time for writing the book by getting up two hours early every day

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France’s finance minister has come under fire for writing his "provisional memoirs" between two nationwide lockdowns and while overseeing the worst economic shock since the Second World War.

L’Ange et la Bête, published on Thursday, is Bruno Le Maire’s ninth book and the third he has written since President Macron handed him the powerful ministerial post in 2017. But its creation while France faced economic meltdown has been frowned on by some of his peers.

Mr Le Maire, 51, said he wrote it in secret this summer by discreetly rising two hours earlier than usual to work on it. As well as charting his time in office, it also includes philosophical and literary musings.

"I wrote it in the midst of a tempest, which makes it more authentic, without glossing over our doubts and our hesitations faced with this exceptional crisis," he told L’Express.

But one Macron aide told Le Parisien: "He could have waited a bit. To bring it out now, well … It’s evident he is seeking to write his own account of events."

"There’s something rather narcissistic about it all," an unnamed fellow minister told the paper.

The popularity of Mr Le Maire has rocketed in recent months as he has opened state coffers to stave of bankruptcies. One pollster this month said: "He clearly has presidential potential."

But he denied the book was an attempt to raise his profile, pointing out the established French tradition of memories by ministers.

"We are the only nation in the world where literature is a form of the powers that be," he told Le Figaro.

"More than any other art, literature offers the best representation of power."

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