One of France’s foremost humorists, PIERRE DANINOS is the author of a new book, THE SECRET OF MAJOR THOMPSON,which Knopf is publishing this month.
Not since André Maurois created the legendary Colonel Bramble some thirty-seven years ago has a Frenchman written so entertainingly about the French and their British cousins as PIERRE D WINGS. Well known to readers of the Figaro os one of the wittiest of contemporary French journalists, he is the author of last years French best seller, Les Carnets du Major Thompson, which has already sold 400,000 copies and is due to be made into a film starring Alec Guinness. An American translation under the title The Notebooks of Major I hompson is to be published in September by Alfred Knopf, and from it the Atlantic is privileged to draiv this excerpt.