0:00:00 > 0:00:05Now on BBC News, it's time for Meet the Author.
0:00:05 > 0:00:07A century ago this week, the legendary French singer
0:00:07 > 0:00:09Edith Piaf was born.
0:00:09 > 0:00:11David Looseley is Professor of Contemporary French Culture
0:00:11 > 0:00:15at the University of Leeds and a man fascinated not only by Piaf
0:00:15 > 0:00:18the singer and performer, but by Piaf the emblem
0:00:18 > 0:00:20of French identity.
0:00:20 > 0:00:23In Edith Piaf A Cultural History, he traces with an academic's rigour
0:00:23 > 0:00:28the development of the Piaf legend - much of it invented by Piaf herself
0:00:28 > 0:00:31- and considers what it tells us about an extraordinary woman,
0:00:31 > 0:00:35but also about France.
0:00:49 > 0:00:53David Looseley, all singers construct a performance.
0:00:53 > 0:00:55It's what they have to do.
0:00:55 > 0:00:57But Edith Piaf seems to have gone much further.
0:00:57 > 0:01:00She seems to have constructed almost an entire life?
0:01:00 > 0:01:06Yes, but I think what she's really constructed is a life in song.
0:01:06 > 0:01:11And what I mean by that is that she chose her songs
0:01:11 > 0:01:14from the very beginning to match her life, but also then
0:01:14 > 0:01:19narrated her own life to match her songs.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22So let's take one simple example of that, a song,
0:01:22 > 0:01:24a very famous song with which she was associated called
0:01:24 > 0:01:27Mon Legionnaire, which is the story of a young woman who falls
0:01:27 > 0:01:29for a legionnaire, and the legionnaire goes off
0:01:29 > 0:01:32to North Africa or wherever and gets killed.
0:01:32 > 0:01:42MUSIC PLAYS: "Mon Legionnaire" by Edith Piaf.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46She was always rather coy about whether that was autobiographical.
0:01:46 > 0:01:48Presumably it wasn't, because the song was originally
0:01:48 > 0:01:49written for someone else to sing?
0:01:49 > 0:01:51Exactly, yes.
0:01:51 > 0:01:54But when she found out that somebody else had sung it first,
0:01:54 > 0:01:56or somebody else was, yeah, either sung it first
0:01:56 > 0:01:59or was going to sing it, she was really cross,
0:01:59 > 0:02:02because she said, "This is my song, this is a song about me
0:02:02 > 0:02:05and it's my legionnaire."
0:02:05 > 0:02:08And had she come to believe that, even if it wasn't strictly true,
0:02:08 > 0:02:09do you think?
0:02:09 > 0:02:11Was she so wrapped up in her creation of herself
0:02:11 > 0:02:13that she believed her own myth?
0:02:13 > 0:02:16I think that's a really interesting point, and a really good point,
0:02:16 > 0:02:20that I think she, in a sense, did come to believe her own myths.
0:02:20 > 0:02:22She famously had a very difficult childhood.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25Her mother was a street singer, her father was a circus performer,
0:02:25 > 0:02:30she was born in difficult circumstances, sent away to live
0:02:30 > 0:02:33with her grandmother in the country, who ran a brothel, among
0:02:33 > 0:02:36all these prostitutes.
0:02:36 > 0:02:38Came back and became a street singer herself.
0:02:38 > 0:02:42Now, her style, her performance style, derives, presumably,
0:02:42 > 0:02:44from that beginning?
0:02:44 > 0:02:47Basically, she stood there and she belted it out
0:02:47 > 0:02:48with this extraordinary voice?
0:02:48 > 0:02:50Yeah.
0:02:50 > 0:02:54But there are occasions when she did more than merely just stand there,
0:02:54 > 0:02:56there was one particular song which you wrote about in the book
0:02:56 > 0:02:59called L'Accordioniste, which is the story of a fling
0:02:59 > 0:03:02with an accordion player.
0:03:02 > 0:03:12MUSIC PLAYS: "L'Accordioniste" by Edith Piaf.
0:03:13 > 0:03:16She is doing something rather unusual for her in that
0:03:16 > 0:03:18song, isn't she?
0:03:18 > 0:03:21Yes, there is a bit of a conflict between how people described her
0:03:21 > 0:03:24concerts in, say, the 40s and 50s particularly,
0:03:24 > 0:03:28and the filmed footage.
0:03:28 > 0:03:31And they normally said that she stood there motionless,
0:03:31 > 0:03:35or an occasional hand movement but, yes, in The Accordionist,
0:03:35 > 0:03:41she uses her hands more and she dramatises the song right up
0:03:41 > 0:03:48until the very last verse.
0:03:56 > 0:04:00There's a wonderful recording she made with a male cappella
0:04:00 > 0:04:04group called Les Compagnons de la Chanson very soon after the end
0:04:04 > 0:04:07of the war, which is, as I understand it, a song
0:04:07 > 0:04:10about a peasant whose life is admirable because,
0:04:10 > 0:04:16actually, nothing happens to him and he never moves away.
0:04:16 > 0:04:18Stunningly uneventful, yes.
0:04:18 > 0:04:19Exactly.
0:04:19 > 0:04:25MUSIC PLAYS: "Les Trois Cloches" by Edith Piaf and Les Compagnons
0:04:26 > 0:04:35de la Chanson.
0:04:45 > 0:04:49During the 40s and 50s, her reputation grew.
0:04:49 > 0:04:51She travelled to America where she was a success.
0:04:51 > 0:04:54Yeah.
0:04:54 > 0:05:00But at the same time, as a result of drink and drugs
0:05:00 > 0:05:02and all the rest of it, her health started to fail,
0:05:02 > 0:05:04and she eventually died in 1964.
0:05:04 > 0:05:0563.
0:05:05 > 0:05:0863, at the age of 47.
0:05:08 > 0:05:10Her funeral was extraordinary, enormous.
0:05:10 > 0:05:12Thousands came.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14Why?
0:05:14 > 0:05:16What had she come to mean at this stage?
0:05:16 > 0:05:18That's a good question.
0:05:18 > 0:05:20It was an extraordinary event.
0:05:20 > 0:05:23Not quite as extraordinary as the death of Diana,
0:05:23 > 0:05:27but it was in that kind of direction, with public weeping
0:05:27 > 0:05:30and so on.
0:05:30 > 0:05:33I think, by then, she had, on the one hand, you know,
0:05:33 > 0:05:40fairly understandably, she had come to represent people's nostalgia.
0:05:40 > 0:05:42You know, by 1963, people of a certain age were already
0:05:42 > 0:05:48looking back to the war with a sense of pain but also nostalgia.
0:05:48 > 0:05:51And I think she represented that.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55But, by then, she'd also come to be connected via the notion
0:05:55 > 0:06:00of la Chanson Francaise, this French chanson, which...
0:06:00 > 0:06:03I always use the word chanson in the book because it means
0:06:03 > 0:06:06something different from song.
0:06:06 > 0:06:08So the idea of this French chanson as being something intrinsically
0:06:08 > 0:06:12French which the French did very well and which somehow expressed
0:06:12 > 0:06:16a deep cultural identity, that's what she'd started to mean
0:06:16 > 0:06:18by the time that she died.
0:06:18 > 0:06:23So let's finish with a Piaf song, a song of defiance which was written
0:06:23 > 0:06:26and performed in the last years of her life, Je Ne Regrette Rien.
0:06:26 > 0:06:30What does this signify, do you think?
0:06:30 > 0:06:35Well, the song is strange in the sense that not a lot
0:06:35 > 0:06:39of non-French speakers realise that the song is not a kind
0:06:39 > 0:06:43of Frank Sinatra My Way song, "I'm at the end of my life
0:06:43 > 0:06:45and I'm looking back."
0:06:45 > 0:06:49At end of the song she says, "I'm being born again
0:06:49 > 0:06:52because I've found a new lover."
0:06:52 > 0:06:54So there is actually an optimistic theme beyond the theme
0:06:54 > 0:06:56of "I regret nothing."
0:06:56 > 0:07:00# Non, rien de rien.
0:07:00 > 0:07:08# Non, je ne regrette rien.
0:07:08 > 0:07:12So it's that intrinsic sense of defiance, "I am who I am,
0:07:12 > 0:07:16and you may have beaten me on the surface, but I've lost
0:07:16 > 0:07:19a battle, I haven't lost the war."
0:07:19 > 0:07:22# Non, rien de rien.
0:07:22 > 0:07:27# Non, je ne regrette rien.
0:07:27 > 0:07:36# C'est paye, balaye, oublie.
0:07:36 > 0:07:46# Ca commence avec toi.
0:07:58 > 0:08:00Good evening.
0:08:00 > 0:08:02It looks like December is so far continuing where November
0:08:03 > 0:08:04left off.
0:08:04 > 0:08:06Once again, this month so far, sunshine has been in short