Henry de Montherlant or Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant ( 1895 – 1972) was a French essayist, novelist and one of the leading French dramatists of the twentieth century. His early successes were works such as Les célibataires (The Bachelors) in 1934, and the tetralogy Les jeunes filles (The Young Girls) (1936-1939), which sold millions of copies and was translated into 13 languages. At this time, Montherlant traveled regularly, mainly to Spain, Italy, and Algeria. From 1929 he began to write plays such as La reine morte (1934), Pasiphaé (1936), Le Maître de Santiago (1947), Port-Royal (1954) and Le Cardinal d'Espagne (1960). He is particularly remembered as a playwright. In his plays, as well as in his novels, he frequently portrayed heroic characters displaying the moral standards he professed. In Le solstice de Juin (1941) he expressed his admiration for Wehrmacht and claimed that France had been justly defeated and conquered in 1940. Like many scions of the old aristocracy, he had hated the Third Republic, especially as it had become in the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair. Christophe Malavoy directed and starred in a 1997 television movie adaption of La Ville dont le prince est un enfant.
