War in the Shadows

Resistance, Deception and Betrayal in Occupied France

Patrick Marnham

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786078100
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

‘One of our very best writers on France.’ Antony Beevor

After publishing an acclaimed biography of Jean Moulin, leader of the French Resistance, Patrick Marnham received an anonymous letter from a person who claimed to have worked for British Intelligence during the war. The ex-spy praised his book but insisted that he had missed the real ‘treasure’. The letter drew Marnham back to the early 1960s when he had been taught French by a mercurial woman – a former Resistance leader, whose SOE network was broken on the same day that Moulin was captured and who endured eighteen months in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Could these two events have been connected? His anonymous correspondent offered a tantalising set of clues that seemed to implicate Churchill and British Intelligence in the catastrophe.

Drawing on a deep knowledge of France and original research in British and French archives, War in the Shadows exposes the ruthless double-dealing of the Allied intelligence services and the Gestapo through one of the darkest periods of the Second World War. It is a story worthy of Le Carré, but with this difference – it is not fiction.

‘A melange of Le Grand Meaulnes and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. It is unforgettable.’ Ferdinand Mount, TLS, Books of the Year

‘A masterly analysis, impeccably presented.’ Allan Mallinson, Spectator

‘Fascinating… Marnham has a vast and scholarly knowledge of this often treacherous world.’ Caroline Moorehead, Literary Review

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for War in the Shadows
• Other Books by Patrick Marnham
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Foreword
• Maps
• List of Principal Characters
• A Note on Noms de Guerre, the BCRA and SOE(RF)
• Chronology
• Glossary
• Introduction: An Anonymous Letter
• PART I: THE HOUSE BY THE RIVER
• 1 Summer of ’62 – The Lost Domain
• 2 The Visitors’ Book
• 3 The Fugitive
• PART II: A CHILDISH AND DEADLY GAME
• 4 ‘Setting Whitehall Ablaze’
• 5 The Swamps and the Forest
• 6 A Network Called Adolphe
• 7 Dreaming Up a Second Front
• 8 ‘That Jeanne d’Arc in Trousers’
• 9 The Fall of PROSPER
• PART III: SETTLING SCORES
• 10 The Purge
• 11 The Jurors of Honour
• 12 Questions in Parliament
• PART IV: THE MYSTERY OF CALUIRE
• 13 Inside 84 Avenue Foch
• 14 The House of Doctor Dugoujon
• 15 A Resistance Legend Is Born
• 16 The Trial of Commissioner Aubrac
• PART V: THE SECRET WAR
• 17 The Remarkable Immunity of Madame Delettraz
• 18 Setting History Ablaze!
• 19 The Last Mission of Jack Agazarian
• 20 Colonel Dansey’s Private War
• 21 The Depths of Deception
• Afterword: The Level Sands
• Postscript
• Casualty List
• Image Section
• Bibliography
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Imprint Page