in 1973, and from 1943 onwards she served as the long-time mistress of Gaston Palewski, the right-hand man of General de Gaulle. The actress Charlotte Rampling who speaks French and often appears in French films calls herself a Francophile. The actress Kristin Scott Thomas is a noted Francophile who lives in Paris and often tried to interest her countrymen in French culture. Writers The classicist Edward Gibbon was fluent in French as he was spent part of his youth in Lausanne, was greatly influenced by the French Enlightenment and was so influenced by French culture that has often been described as being "bi-cultural". The writer Charles Dickens was a Francophile who often vacationed in France and in a speech delivered in Paris in 1846 in French called the French "the first people in the universe". Another British Francophile was the writer Rudyard Kipling, who argued very strongly after World War I for an Anglo-French alliance to uphold the peace, calling Britain and France in 1920 the "twin fortresses of European civilization". The playwright Oscar Wilde was describe as an "ardent Francophile" who spent much of his time in Paris. One of the better known Francophiles during this period was King Edward VII who during his time as Prince of Wales lived for much of the time in France. The writer Raymond Mortimer was such a Francophile that he broke down in tears when he heard France had signed an armistice with Nazi Germany on 21 June 1940, saying it was if half of England had just fallen into the sea. The Francophile writer and historian Denis William Brogan wrote after hearing of the armistice of 1940 that he very much looked forward to the day when the "eternal France" which he loved would return. The Francophile novelist Charles Langbridge Morgan dedicated his 1940 novel The Voyage to two French friends, writing "France is an ideal necessary for civilization and will live again when tyranny is spent". The writer, diplomat and National Labour MP Harold Nicolson was a Francophile who when he visited France for the first time in five years in March 1945, he fell to kiss the earth upon landing in France. When a Frenchman asked the prostrate Nicolson "Monsieur a laissé tomber quelque-chose?" ("Sir, have you dropped something?"), Nicolson replied "Non, j'ai retrouvé quelque-chose" (No, I have recovered something"). Asia Iran As with much of the Western world