[2] He studied at the École normale supérieure, at the time a school of the University of Paris, and then became a novelist and literary critic for the Action française of Charles Maurras.

Brasillach was fascinated by the cinema and in 1935 co-wrote a detailed critical history of that medium, Histoire du cinéma (re-edited in 1943), with his brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche.

[3] Unlike several other authors and critics of the time, Brasillach did not see cinema through an overtly political lens, although the 1943 edition of his work did contain anti-Semitic comments not present in the original.

[4] Despite being fervent nationalists and personally believing that each nation and people had a unique cinema, the authors instead focused on international trends rather than local particularities.

Pabst, René Clair and Jean Renoir and to some Hollywood films from directors such as John Ford, Frank Borzage and King Vidor.

He became an editor of Je suis partout, a fascist paper founded by dissidents from the Action Française and led by Pierre Gaxotte.

[18] The prosecutor reiterated Brasillach's vehement antisemitism, linked his praise of Germany and denunciation of the Resistance to SS massacres in France and played upon homophobic sentiments by repeatedly drawing the jurors' attention to the author's homosexuality (alleged, but denied by those who knew him best), noting, inter alia, that he had slept with the enemy and approved of Germany's "penetration" of France.

[19][14] In so doing, the prosecution was making hay with Brasillach's own words, as he had suggested, as Liberation approached, that France had slept with Germany and would remember the experience fondly.

Resistance member and author François Mauriac, whom Brasillach had savaged in the press, circulated a petition to Charles de Gaulle to commute the sentence.

It has been argued that De Gaulle refused to spare Brasillach because the author had on numerous occasions called for Georges Mandel's execution.

De Gaulle admired Mandel, a prominent conservative politician (who happened to be Jewish), and who was murdered by the Milice during the closing days of the Occupation.

In Lettre he was unrepentant about his fascism, his anti-Semitism or his wartime activity, although he insisted that he had no idea that deported French Jews were being murdered.

[6] A group called Association des Amis de Robert Brasillach[25] celebrates the author's work and legacy.