David Looseley is Emeritus Professor of Contemporary French Culture at the University of Leeds, UK. He writes on the popular music, culture and cultural policy of France, including Édith Piaf: A Cultural History (2015), joint winner of the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, and Popular Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, Debate (2003). He was contributing editor (with Diana Holmes) of Imagining the Popular in Contemporary French Culture (2013). He is Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
A jewel of a little book, elegantly written and limpidly setting out how and why Piaf’s artistry counted in 1961 and is still of interest to lovers of French chanson and to the academic study of popular music alike even sixty years after her death. * French Studies *