Julian Jackson is Emeritus Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London, and one of the foremost British scholars of twentieth-century France.

His magisterial life of Charles de Gaulle, A Certain Idea of France, was published to universal acclaim in 2018 by Allen Lane / Penguin. A Certain Idea of France won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, the American Library in Paris Award, the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography, the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique du Touquet, the Prix Special du Jury de Prix de Géopolitique, and was longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize.

His other books include France: The Dark Years (2001, shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Award) and The Fall of France (2003, winner of the Wolfson History Prize).

A Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society, he is also a Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2023 he published France on Trial, on the case of Marshal Pétain, again with Allen Lane / Penguin and Harvard. In early 2024 it was announced that France on Trial had won the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction, making Julian one of the very few authors to win this award more than once.