Professor Raymond Aron of the University of Paris
Here Robert McKenzie introduces his distinguished guest:

"What has gone wrong with Franco-British relations? They are now probably at the lowest ebb they have been for at least a generation.

Is this solely the fault of President de Gaulle as the popular press sometimes seems to imply? Or is there a fundamental conflict of interest, of temperament, and of goals between the two countries?

In Personal Choice today there will be an opportunity to hear the opinions of one of the most astute and stimulating Frenchmen of our day. Raymond Aron, who has lived in Britain and knows this country well, is both an outstanding figure in the intellectual world of Paris and a brilliant journalist.

He is Professor of Sociology in the University of Paris and the author of a dozen books, including a study of the influence of Communism on French intellectuals, a number of treatises on sociological and political theory, and most recently, a major work on international relations.

Despite his formidable academic accomplishments, Professor Aron is by no means an ivory-towered intellectual. He writes a column of personal comment on current political and economic issues two or three times a week in the Paris daily, Le Figaro.

His views are said more often than not to exasperate the General. Certainly Aron is not a Gaullist. Although he probably would no dissent from the view that "every Frenchman is at some moments touched by Gaullism."

He is in many ways ideally suited to the perplexing task of explaining President de Gaulle and Gaullism to a British audience and analysing the prospects in the longer run of our being admitted to Europe."