Jacques Chirac, twice president of France, died on September 26th, aged 86

Fans praised his wit and tactile warmth (unlike most French politicians, he enjoyed hobnobbing with the voters, preferably over a beer or slice of saucisson in an unpretentious zinc-clad bar). Jacques Chirac was successful, too: mayor of Paris, twice prime minister and twice president, from 1995 to 2007. He may have bought a chateau in la France profonde, but it was a "little one", sniffed a snobbish predecessor, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

A proud defender of the French language, he stormed out of a summit meeting when a French businessman dared to use English (he also said, only half-jokingly, that Britain's deplorable cuisine made it inherently untrustworthy). Despite a happy student summer at Harvard, he bridled at America's overweening ways, arguing for a "multi-polar world" as a way to counter its post-war dominance. Equally, he setup France 24 to rival the "Anglo-Saxon imperialism" of the BBC and CNN. He was contrarian too, resuming nuclear testing in the Pacific to international dismay.

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