Maurice Clavel, a French writer, journalist, and philosopher, was born on November 10, 1920, in Frontignan, Hérault, to a family of small shopkeepers. He was a brilliant pupil and attended the prestigious École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he became acquainted with Trotskyist Jean-Toussaint Desanti and Maurrassian Pierre Boutang.
As a young man, Clavel joined the French Popular Party in his hometown of Frontignan, and later, he became disillusioned with the conservative milieu. He then joined the Résistance in 1942 and played a key role in the liberation of Chartres, where he greeted General Charles de Gaulle.
After the war, Clavel became a fervent activist in the Rally of the French People and founded a newspaper called L'Essor. He also wrote plays, including Les Incendiaires and La Terrasse de midi, but they failed to gain popularity. Clavel then accepted a professor tenure in the Carnot high school in Dijon.
In 1951, Jean Vilar appointed Clavel as secretary-general of the Théâtre National Populaire, but his new play Malsameda and his first novel Une fille pour l'été turned out to be failures. Clavel then started his career as a journalist, writing for Combat and protesting against the invasion of Hungary by Soviet tanks in 1956 and the use of torture in Algeria.
He became involved with left-wing Gaullists in the Democratic Union of Labour in 1959 and taught philosophy at Camille Sée and Buffon high school in Paris from 1960 to 1963. Clavel also presented a daily radio program with Emmanuel Berl, but he resigned after the refusal by managers of the radio station to grant Jean Daniel a right of reply about Algeria.
Clavel published Le Temps de Chartres in 1964 and ceased his regular contribution to Combat. However, he continued to support General De Gaulle's position on Algeria, who entrusted him to engage in a dialogue with Messali Hadj.
