Larry Collins

Larry Collins ran the Paris bureau of Newsweek from 1961 to 1965, by which time he had been writing with Dominique Lapierre for years; the two met in 1953 while both were doing public affairs work for Allied headquarters in the city. Is Paris Burning?, their first book together, appeared in 1965. It reconstructs the last days of the German occupation in August 1944, hour by hour and from every side: the resistance rising, the Allied decision to divert an army towards the capital, and the German commander sitting on an order from Berlin to leave nothing standing. The title is the question the German leader is said to have asked down the telephone. The partnership lasted forty-three years and produced O Jerusalem, Freedom at Midnight and The Fifth Horseman. Collins was born in 1929 and died in southern France in June 2005.