He was born in Toulon to Pierre Poujol, a classics teacher in several lycées in the French provinces and Paris as well as one of the leaders of the Christian social movement and author of publications on the Protestant Cévennes.
[2] Jacques' mother Marie Teissier de Caladon was descended from a Vebronnaise family.
[3] He remained with them until September 1944 and from January to August 1945 served in the 1e RMSM of the 2nd Armored Division under general Leclerc.
In 1948 he began teaching French literature at the University of California in Los Angeles and in 1955 at the faculté des lettres de Paris he successfully defended his doctoral thesis on the evolution and influence of absolutism in France between 1498 and 1559.
He then became a cultural advisor in New York from 1961 to 1966 then counsellor to France's Office national des universités et écoles françaises back in Paris until 1978.