Europe 1 journalist Marc Messier looks back on the life of the man who accompanied the French for 40 years.

VIDEO

Who was Jacques Chirac really? Even his closest friends struggle to answer this question. For the former head of state, who died Thursday at the age of 86, was perhaps the most secret of all the presidents of the Fifth Republic. Far, in any case, the image he has sent back for almost half a century of public life.

Cow ass and Corona

Behind the drinker of Corona, the flatterer of "culs of cow", hid thus a passionate of the first arts, keen of the disappeared civilizations and discrete amateur of poetry. Behind the tall seducer with a broad smile, hides intimate wounds, like the illness of his eldest daughter, Laurence.

Dreams of distant travels for the little Chirac

The child Jacques Chirac dreamed of great travels and distant countries, but it is in France, during a political career of 40 years that culminated at the Elysee for 12 years (1995-2007), that he built his life and his legend. Without ever getting rid of his first passions. But in the biggest secrecy.

His ambitions, his personal life, his passions, Marc Messier draws the portrait of the man behind politics.