Bernard Le Nail

Who was Bernard Le Nail?

Bernard Le Nail was a French writer and Breton militant. After studying commerce in Paris, he headed the promotional office of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Nantes. In 1979 he became Secretary General of the Comité d'Etude et de Liaison des Intérêts Bretons at Lanester. Between 1983 and 2000 he was director of the Cultural Institute of Brittany and had an important role in the conception and publication of the collection Les Bretons au-delà des mers : Explorateurs et grands voyageurs. He was also involved in the conception and publication of the following works: 500 Bretons à connaître, revising the Guide Bleu Bretagne, Guides Gallimard Bretagne, Les noms qui ont fait l’histoire de Bretagne, Dictionnaire des femmes en Bretagne, La Bretagne entre Armor et Argoat.

On 12 November 1999 Le Nail was accused by the French communist newspaper L'Humanité of being a former activist of the Breton separatist organisation the Front de Libération de la Bretagne Liberation Front of Brittany. He strenuously denied this accusation, but made no apologies for his defence of Breton culture and language in the face of the highly centralised French state. Several organisations also objected to local councils in Brittany disseminating free of charge, in schools, his and his wife Jacqueline's Dictionnaire des romanciers de Bretagne, dealing with Breton novelists. Under his own name and under the pseudonym Joseph Bréhier, Le Nail also published numerous articles in newspapers and journals on Breton historical and cultural issues.