About our guests
Philippe Collin
A producer at France Inter for over twenty years, Philippe Collin studied history and created a series of historical podcasts, downloaded more than 40 million times, on figures including Léon Blum, Napoleon and Philippe Pétain. He co-wrote the graphic novel Le Voyage de Marcel Grob (2018), drawn from his great-uncle’s wartime story, and was profiled by the New York Times in January 2026. The Barman of the Ritz, his first novel, won the Prix Maurice Druon, has sold 350,000 copies in France and been translated into thirty languages.
Philippe Sands
Philippe Sands is an acclaimed Franco-British writer and an expert in international law. He is Professor of the Public Understanding of Law at University College London and has appeared as counsel before the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court. His literary career began with East West Street (2016), a blend of history, memoir and legal thriller tracing the origins of international law through his own family history. Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize and translated into over twenty languages, it was followed by The Ratline (2020), an investigation into the high-ranking Nazi Otto Wächter and the escape networks of war criminals, and by 38 Londres Street (2026), which completes the trilogy with the story of Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia. His 2022 bestseller The Last Colony exposed the British government’s role in the exile of the Chagos Islanders. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, and won the 2018 Prix du Livre Européen..
