Poirier pens Notre-Dame book for Oneworld

French author and journalist Agnès Poirier will write a book about the Notre-Dame fire for Oneworld.

The publisher’s editor-at-large Bill Swainson bought world rights to Notre-Dame: The Soul of France by Agnès Poirier from Simon Trewin at Simon Trewin Ltd.

The 256-page volume, which includes an eight-page colour insert, will be published in hardback and e-book to coincide with the first anniversary of the fire in April 2020, priced at £14.99. Poirier will undertake a full programme of promotional events and festivals.

The author witnessed the fire tear through the 800-year-old cathedral on 15th April from her Parisian apartment. “I stood at my kitchen window,” she wrote the next day for the New York Times, “and watched the 315-foot-tall spire engulfed in flames. The roof, dating to the 13th century and made of more than a thousand oak trees, was being eaten alive. I watched a stained-glass window melt. Then the spire collapsed.”

Oneworld said: “Focusing on a series of key dates – from Joan of Arc, through the coronation of Napoleon, Victor Hugo’s campaign to preserve the cathedral in the 19th century and Baron Haussmann’s reimagining of the streets in front of it and on to the liberation in 1944 and the film of 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame' in the 1950s, to the fire itself – Agnès Poirier’s short, revealing history will tell the story of the cathedral and go to the heart of why it means so much to the French and why the plans for reconstruction are so controversial.”

Swainson said: “Around the world the disaster struck a chord because quite simply the church symbolises France. Agnès Poirier is the perfect author to tell Notre-Dame’s extraordinary story, to investigate the controversy surrounding its reconstruction and to reveal the deep malaise – gilet jaunes and all – at the heart of the country.”

The firefighters arrived at the scene of the fire within minutes and while many of the cathedral’s paintings and ornaments were saved and the church’s colony of bees survived, the overall damage was severe with the spire and roof destroyed in the blaze and the structure at risk. Donations for the restoration from some of the country’s wealthiest families and businesses were pledged in the aftermath.

French authorities said last month they have no reason to believe that criminal action was to blame for a fire that tore through the iconic structure, according to the BBC. Investigators are now considering the possibility of negligence.

Poirier is a journalist and broadcaster for the BBC, CNN and French media, whose role it is to explain France to the British and Americans and the British and Americans to the French. She is also a member of the pre-selection committee for the Cannes Film Festival and the author of several books, including the acclaimed Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris, 1940-50 (Bloomsbury, 2018).