In politics, only physical death counts, otherwise resurrection is always possible,” Alain Juppé, the Gaullist politician, observed last week. He was speaking of France’s main opposition UMP party, which he described as “moribund, not dead” after a bitterly disputed leadership contest that threatens to split the centre-right group he once led.

But he could as easily have been referring to the career of his mentor Jacques Chirac, the former president who ranks among the great survivors of French politics. It was Chirac who founded the UMP in 2002, in an attempt to end decades of fratricidal divisions in the French centre-right – which he himself had proved expert in exploiting during his rise to the presidency. Anyone seeking to understand the current mess could turn to this new English translation of Chirac’s memoirs as a primer.

My Life in Politics, assembled from interviews by a friendly biographer, spans four decades in high office. Beginning with his stint as employment minister under Georges Pompidou, when Chirac says he dissuaded unions from joining the 1968 student protests, the book ends with his second term as president, during which he won notoriety in the US and acclaim at home for opposing the Iraq war.