Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie (born 19 July 1929) is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the Ancien Régime, particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of France, Le Roy Ladurie has been called the "standard-bearer" of the third generation of the Annales school and the "rock star of the medievalists", noted for his work in social history.
Le Roy Ladurie was born in Les Moutiers-en-Cinglais, Calvados. His father was Jacques Le Roy Ladurie,who would become minister of Agriculture for Marshal Philippe Pétain and subsequently a member of the French resistance after breaking with the Vichy regime. Le Roy Ladurie described his childhood in Normandy growing up on his family estate in the countryside as intensely Catholic and royalist in politics. The Le Roy Ladurie family were originally the aristocratic de Roy Laduries, descended from a Catholic priest who fell in love with one of his parishioners, dropped out of the priesthood ...
