During WW2, his father, who had formed a friendship with the influential Pétainist Xavier Vallat dating back to their days together in the trenches in World War I[a] remained in Paris[b] while sending his family away to avoid persecution and deportation.
[2] After the armistice he frequented members of the former Vichy School of Uriage, which, after the régime had dissolved it, attracted numerous promising youths, who shared a contempt for the Third Republic and an intense desire to develop a new model for France.
[4] In 1953 he became economics expert for the newly-founded centre-left weekly L'Express [5] He then married Léone Georges-Picot, secretary and chief of staff of Pierre Mendès France's government.
[5] Acknowledged as a brilliant administrative functionary, Nora was close to Mendès France,[5] an association that, according to his brother Pierre, became a recurrent obstacle throughout his later career under Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou, François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac.
[6] Widely admired, his memory as a modernizer was commemorated a decade later with a posthumous Festschrift in his honour, Simon Nora: moderniser la France.