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In 1941, Aldous Huxley published Grey Eminence: A Study in Religion and Politics. It was the biography of François Leclerc du Tremblay. This French Capuchin friar was also known as l’éminence grise because of a robe he used to wear and because, although he was not a cardinal, he was as influential as one, in his role as advisor to His Eminence the Cardinal de Richelieu. Twice removed from the official source of power—Richelieu was in his turn King Louis XIII’s chief minister—du Tremblay profoundly shaped French and European politics and the course of the Thirty Years’ War. This was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, World War Zero really. It is such an ability to control events and people’s behaviour by influencing the influencers, behind the scenes, that I have in mind when coining the expression “grey power”.

DOI: 10.1007/s13347-015-0206-y

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