La Table ronde: a publisher on the right
At the end of the 1950s, Roland Laudenbach (1921-1991) directed La Table Ronde, founded during the war, towards anti-Gaullism and the defence of French Algeria.
As well as the young writers he published – the ‘hussars’, Jacques Laurent, Roger Nimier and Antoine Blondin – the review L’Esprit public, launched in 1960, also deepened his engagement.
Although politically opposed to Jérôme Lindon, Roland Laudenbach supported him when Le Déserteur by Maurienne was seized and judged: ‘Literature under constraints does not exist. There is no publishing without freedom,’ he wrote to a colleague.
After independence, La Table Ronde published former members of the OAS (a secret army organisation in favour of French Algeria) as well as representatives of the intellectual right wing who considered themselves non-conformist.