The Minister, his wife, her lover and the publisher.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France Napoleonic Interior Minister, may have been flat out dousing the fires on the suburban estates but he has just managed time off to avert a blaze that was about to break out around his private life.

Sarko summoned to his ministry Vincent Barbare, boss of the Editions First house, who was about to come out with an authorised and intimate biography of Cécilia, the Minister's estranged wife. Straight after the meeting, Barbare cancelled next week's release and ordered the pulping of the 25,000 first run of Cécilia Sarkozy, Entre le Coeur et la Raison (Between Heart and Reason), by Valérie Domain. He even ordered the text purged from his firm's computers, according to Le Point magazine. Why ? Because publication would be "inappropriate" in France's current state of emergency. The author told us today that she is outraged by what amounts to an act of political censorship.

For those who missed the last episode in this most un-Gallic soap opera, Cécilia, 47, her husband's chief-of-staff and glamour figure in her own right, ran off with Richard Attias, an eminent events organiser, earlier this year. Sarkozy, 50, who is hell-bent on becoming President in 18 months time, is now an item with a political correspondent from le Figaro. What makes the saga unusual is not the routine hanky panky in high places, but that the usually squeamish French media have reported it all, including names. Sarkozy's friends see the hand of the Elysée Palace behind the publicity around the President's bête noir.

Mme Sarkozy collaborated with Domain, an editor with Gala, a celebrity magazine, and gave her access to her children and friends, including her new companion. The book "tells the tale of their idyll with great precision and much intimate detail," according to France Soir, Domain's former employer. The lawyers had already vetted the book, which was seen as a sure-fire best-seller. Domain says that there is nothing particularly shocking in her tale, except the inside account of the marital break-up.

So what did France's most powerful politician tell the publisher to frighten him so quickly into pulling Domain's book? According to le Canard Enchaîné, he "threatened legal thunder". Maybe. France's rulers have a long history of making life difficult for troublesome scribblers. The late President Mitterrand liked to inflict income tax audits on his more annoying detractors. However, there is another explanation that was aired by France Soir and confirmed to us by the author today. Sarkozy, they said, threatened to pull strings to block the imminent take-over of Editions First by Editis, the country's second biggest publishing group. Guillaume Sarkozy, the minister's businessman brother, is close to Wendel, the family that owns Editis.

Domain complained today that her publisher's plug-pull was "a sudden display of omerta that leaves me high and dry." In a call to The Times, she said: "I am very angry. In a democracy you cannot ban a book under political pressure."

The Sarkozy saga is splitting opinion at Paris dinner tables. The old school holds that the Minister has been politically wounded because a cuckold's horns sit badly on a French politician. "If you can't keep your wife in line, how can you run the country?" goes the argument.  The modern school holds that Sarkozy has won sympathy by surviving the humiliation with aplomb. He goes for the sympathy vote in today's Express magazine. "These last six months have without been the hardest that I have ever lived and I am coming out of it stronger."

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Comments

[Sarah]

Seeing as the French seem able to separate professional competence from personal issues I don't think Sarkozy need worry too much about his hopes for the presidency in 18months time. No one will remember or be bothered by his errant wife by then anyway.

If we were in the US, it would be a different story no doubt. One thing to be appreciated in France is the lack of hysteria with regard to private scandal. I just hope they never get infected with the American bug. Sanctimonious hysteria is really a most tiresome attitude.