Château de Montjeu

    Recent political history links a very private Burgundian château with Britain. Sir James Goldsmith (1933-97) was the son of a British former Conservative MP, but his mother was Burgundian, and so it was no surprise that Sir James chose to buy a château in Burgundy, Montjeu at Broye, near Autun (Saône-et-Loire), and to make it his main French home. Indeed, it was there that he spent most of his final illness.



    The château is situated within a very large wooded park, and remains private, but there are some old postcard photographs of it, as well as recent drone images. It was built in the early 17th century, and is known to have hosted both Mme de Sévigné and Voltaire (though not at the same time, for obvious reasons!). Having fallen into some disrepair, it was restored by its mid-20th century owner, Roger Demon, who also sheltered a Jewish family there during the Nazi Occupation, for which he was declared Righteous among the Nations after the war.





    According to Lady Annabel Goldsmith's memoirs, it was during a houseparty at the château that Sir James Goldsmith had the idea of founding the Referendum Party. He had already been elected an MEP in 1994 for the Mouvement pour la France - l'Autre Europe. This sovereignist group won 13% of the French euro elections vote, and Sir James could see that euroscepticism was an idea whose time had come: although the Referendum Party did not take off immediately in the UK, its followers quickly morphed into UKIP and went on to win the 2015 referendum (its successor Brexit Party becoming the largest party in the UK's final European Parliament election, in 2019), something which of course Sir James did not live to see. As much of Europe is now swinging towards the sovereignist view that borders and national/cultural identity need protection, it may be that Sir James was prescient in picking up on that incipient movement thirty years ago.










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