When he died in a road accident in Talence in the summer of 1953, the Pope sent Paul Claudel a letter of condolence.
His daughter Reine Marie Paris was the biographer of Camille Claudel, her great aunt.
The choice of a French national as the first Secretary General for the Council of Europe, like the choice of Strasbourg as the seat of the organisation, was the result of a deal between the British and the French.
In return, the French accepted the British blueprint of an organisation with limited powers, including a parliamentary assembly that was purely consultative.