Discover the truth behind one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of World War II.
Who was the enigmatic Jean Moulin, a man as skilled in deception as he was in acts of heroism? The memory of this French Resistance hero, who was betrayed to the Gestapo and tortured by Klaus Barbie, the infamous ‘Butcher of Lyon’, is revered alongside that of other national icons. But Moulin’s story is full of unanswered questions and the truth of his life is far more complicated than the legend.
Patrick Marnham, winner of the Marsh Prize for biography, thrillingly tells the epic story of France’s greatest war hero, bringing to light the shadowy and often deceitful world of the French Resistance, and offers a shocking conclusion to one of the great unsolved mysteries of World War II.
Table of Contents:
Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Legend
Caluire
Into the Pantheon
Part I: Life
1. A Republican Cradle, 1789–1899
2. Growth of a Senior Civil Servant, 1899–1919
3. A Secret Man, a Complex Man, 1919–1934
4. Moulin Rouge, 1934–1939
Part II: War
5. The Prefect of Chartres, 1939–1940
6. Zones, 1940–1941
7. Life on Half-Pay, 1940–1941
8. An Envoy to London, 1941
Part III: Death
9. Life Underground, 1942–1943
10. Vive la Nuit! November 1942–June 1943
11. An Urn and a Pot of Jam, June–July 1943
Part IV: Resurrection
12. The machinery of Insurrection, 1943–1944
13. Murdering History, 1945–1949
14. The Doctor’s Waiting Room, 21 June 1943
Postscript
Postscript to the New Edition
Glossary
Chronology
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Patrick Marnham is a biographer and travel writer. He began his career as a reporter on Private Eye and has written for many newspapers including The Times, the Guardian, The New York Review of Books and Libération and has been literary editor of the Spectator and the first Paris correspondent of the Independent. His books have won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize and the Marsh Biography Award and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lived in Paris for twelve years and now lives in Oxfordshire.
Review :
Secret agents do not leave reliable accounts of their activities, nor do doubleand triple-agents act from simple motives. The lucidity comes, like the solution of a good detective story, towards the end of a tangled tale full of unusual suspects.
A brilliantly sustained, atmospheric and often tensely thrilling narrative [. . .] This book is a remarkable achievement that evokes the whole tragedy of wartime France.
This is first-rate history that reads like a thriller and keeps the reader engrossed to the very end.
A gripping account of the last days of the French Resistance hero who was tortured to death by Klaus Barbie. Marnham’s biography is a brilliant mix of political thriller and wartime history.
Enthralling and intelligent, a masterly exploration of the sinister labyrinth that was wartime France [...] It is a remarkable book, utterly fascinating.
... Patrick Marnham is very good on French self-deception: a moral self-deception which began with Vichy for psychological reasons and continued under de Gaulle. His book is as gripping as a detective story.
If you are interested in France, the real France, or if you are interested in the Second World War, or if you are interested in courage, real courage, and how it can rise to meet the most severe test imaginable, then I believe you ought to make it your business to read Patrick Marnham’s extraordinary book.’
