The French Exiles in London
When France fell to Germany in June 1940 and Marshal Pétain's Vichy government signed an armistice with the Nazis, a significant number of French citizens chose exile rather than submission. Charles de Gaulle's famous BBC broadcast of 18 June 1940, delivered from London and calling on all French people to continue the fight, was the founding moment of the Free French movement — and London became the capital of Free France for the next four years, housing de Gaulle's headquarters, the Free French forces, and a community of exiles that represented some of the most distinguished figures in French intellectual, cultural, and political life.
The geography of Free French London extended across several parts of the city, with the official headquarters at Carlton Gardens in St James's and various other installations scattered across the West End and beyond. But the residential community of French exiles was concentrated in certain areas of London that combined accessibility with the affordable housing that even distinguished exiles required when living on uncertain wartime incomes. Belsize Park, with its good tube connections, its established tradition of welcoming Continental Europeans, and its supply of furnished flats in manageable Victorian buildings, became one of the principal French residential quarters.
The French community in NW3 during the war years was a remarkable concentration of talent and distinction. Writers, artists, intellectuals, politicians, and military figures who had made names for themselves in pre-war France found themselves living as neighbours in the streets of Belsize Park, their enforced proximity creating a social world that was simultaneously distinguished and somewhat desperate — the camaraderie of people thrown together by catastrophe rather than by choice.
Cultural Life in Exile
The Free French in London attempted, with considerable success, to maintain the intellectual and cultural life of France in exile. The French Institute in Kensington provided a centre for French cultural activities, and various publishing ventures produced French-language newspapers, literary reviews, and books for the exile community. Belsize Park's concentration of French residents made it a natural node in this cultural network, and the cafes and restaurants of the neighbourhood that could serve French food and coffee became informal meeting places for the exile community.
The political tensions within the Free French community were considerable, reflecting the divisions that existed in French society between supporters of de Gaulle, communists, socialists, and various other factions that had been united by their rejection of Vichy but were otherwise deeply divided about the future of France. These tensions played out in the drawing rooms and pubs of Belsize Park as much as in the official meetings of the Free French leadership, and the neighbourhood was the setting for political conversations and arguments that had real consequences for the conduct of the resistance and the planning of the liberation.
The French Community's Legacy
The Free French community in NW3 left a lasting cultural mark on the neighbourhood. The tradition of French cafes, French food shops, and French social life that can be traced in Belsize Park and the surrounding area from the 1940s onward owes something to the wartime concentration of French exiles who established patterns of consumption and sociability that persisted after the return of most of their community to France after the liberation. The French restaurants, the patisseries, the wine merchants, and the general Francophile character of certain aspects of NW3's commercial life are in part a legacy of the wartime French presence.
Several members of the French exile community in NW3 chose to remain in London after the war, either because they had married British spouses, established British professional connections, or simply found London more congenial than the France to which they returned. These French Londoners contributed to the neighbourhood's continuing Continental character and maintained the connection between Belsize Park and France that the wartime exile had established. The French Lycée in South Kensington, the French Institute, and the various French associations that continued to function in London after the war drew on networks of connection that the wartime community had created, and NW3 remained a significant node in Franco-British cultural life long after the immediate wartime emergency had passed.
*Published in the Hampstead Renovations Heritage Collection — exploring the architecture, history, and stories of London’s most remarkable neighbourhoods.*