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She Landed By Moonlight: The Story of Secret Agent Pearl Witherington: the 'real Charlotte Gray' - Couverture souple

Seymour-Jones, Carole

 
9781444724622: She Landed By Moonlight: The Story of Secret Agent Pearl Witherington: the 'real Charlotte Gray'
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 1444724622 ISBN 13 : 9781444724622
Editeur : Hodder Paperbacks, 2014

Synopsis

On the night of the 22 September 1943 Pearl Witherington, a twenty-nine-year-old British secretary and agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), was parachuted from a Halifax bomber into Occupied France. Like Sebastian Faulks' heroine, Charlotte Gray, Pearl had a dual mission: to fight for her beloved, broken France and to find her lost love. Pearl's lover was a Parisian parfumier turned soldier, Henri Cornioley, who had been taken prisoner while serving in the French Logistics Corps and subsequently escaped from his German POW camp.

Agent Pearl Witherington's wartime record is unique and heroic. As the only woman agent in the history of SOEs in France to have run a network, she became a fearless and legendary guerrilla leader organising, arming and training 3,800 Resistance fighters. Probably the greatest female organiser of armed maquisards in France, the woman whom her young troops called 'Ma Mère', Pearl lit the fires of Resistance in Central France so that Churchill's famous order to 'set Europe ablaze', which had brought SOE into being, finally came to pass.

Pearl's story takes us from her harsh, impoverished childhood in Paris, to the lonely forests and farmhouses of the Loir-et-Cher where she would become a true 'warrior queen'.

Shortly before Pearl's death in 2008, the Queen presented her with a CBE in Paris. While male agents and Special Force Jedburghs received the DSO or Military Cross, an ungrateful country had forgotten Pearl. She had been offered a civilian decoration in 1945 which she refused, saying 'There was nothing civil about what I did.' But what pleased her most was to receive her Parachute Wings, for which she had waited over 60 years. Two RAF officers travelled to her old people's home and she was finally able to pin the coveted wings on her lapel. Pearl died in February 2008 aged 93.

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À propos de l'auteur

Carole Seymour-Jones was born in Wales. She was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize for her biography of Vivienne Eliot, first wife of TS Eliot. Her most recent biography of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, A Dangerous Liaison, received widespread acclaim. Carole is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Surrey, and former Deputy President and chair of the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN, the writers' charity.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Hodder Paperbacks
Date d'édition
2014
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
1444724622
ISBN 13 
9781444724622
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
432
Coordonnées du fabricant
Hodder
https://www.hodder.co.uk/

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