After studying in Strasbourg, Madrid and Paris, he began his career as a journalist by creating the magazine Latitude - mensuel d'actualité mondiale with the advertiser Yves Michalon.
Among his great partners can be quoted the names of cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Mario Vargas Llosa, prince Karim Aga Khan, Albert II, Prince of Monaco, actor Dirk Bogarde, dancer Maya Plisetskaya, painter Balthus, Mario Soares, Alexandre Zinoviev, Zbigniew Brzezinski, general Zia ul-Haq, Manuel Barroso, Yehudi Menuhin, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar etc.
He also collaborated with Susana Rinaldi, Milva, Teresa Berganza and other classical musicians such as Aldo Ciccolini, Jean Guillou and Yehudi Menuhin.
But it was in the literary field that his achievements were most striking: the first French biographer of Stefan Zweig, his book L''avenir de la nostalgie published the year that saw the end of the Berlin Wall earned him the 1990 Prix Cazes and other awards.
His work has earned him the repeated support of the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint-Laurent Foundation and in 2009 the Prix Henri de Régnier bstowed by the Académie Française.