Express, L'. Founded in May 1953 by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, who had already made his mark on Le Monde, L'Express was initially a committed journal, opposed to the prosecution of the Algerian War, close to Mendès-France, but open to a diversity of views—including the Gaullist solution for Algeria espoused by Jean Daniel, and the regular columns (‘blocs-notes’) where Mauriac rallied to de Gaulle. Relaunched as a news magazine in 1964, with a technocratic centrist stance, L'Express aimed at the ‘engineer from Grenoble’. It suffered from the political or ideological toings-and-froings of its chief proprietor (be it Servan-Schreiber or James Goldsmith), but it succeeded in becoming France's premier news magazine. Former staff members founded other weeklies: Jean Daniel Le Nouvel Observateur, Claude Imbert Le Point.
[Michael Palmer]
