He lived his life in lurid colour. But it often felt as if Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died on January 7th at the age of 96, belonged to an era of black and white. There was Indochina (where he served as a paratrooper); French Algeria (where he fought for the homeland, and admitted to torture); the French Fourth Republic (during which he was first elected to the National Assembly, in 1956, two years before Charles de Gaulle wrote the modern constitution). Even Mr Le Pen’s 19th-century mansion, perched magnificently on a ridge overlooking Paris, appeared to be the product of decades of neglect; its walls were dark brown, furniture shabby and it “stank of death”, noted Yann, his middle daughter. Like Mr Le Pen’s unapologetic extremist politics, the far-right leader’s formative moments seem to belong to history. Yet his influence on French politics could hardly be more current.