Paul Valéry, poet, essayist and leading figure in French intellectual life, was born in 1871. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1925. During the Second World War he refused to collaborate with the Vichy régime. He died in Paris in July 1945 and was buried with national mourning in the cemetery at Sète, location of his most famous poem ‘Le Cimetière marin’ (The Graveyard by the Sea).