Divided Loyalties: A Scots Woman In Occupied France: (Canongate Classics)

In this candid and poignant account of her life in France during World War II, Janet Teissier du Cros powerfully evokes the international political atmosphere of the time and its effects upon her family. Separated from her French husband for most of the war, the author spent the years of German occupation with her young children in an isolated summer cottage in the Cevennes. Short of food and desperate for news of the war and of her husband, she was also profoundly opposed to Pétain's leadership and thereby alienated from her husband's family who were loyal to the French leader. It is a moving story which faces the decay of human standards induced by defeat, starvation and enemy occupation with honesty, courage and wit.

About the Author :
Janet Grierson (1905-1990), was the youngest daughter of Sir Herbert Grierson, the distinguished literary scholar who was at the time Professor of English at Aberdeen University. The family moved to Edinburgh in 1915 when Grierson took up the chair of English at the university there. Janet showed a rare musical talent as a girl, and became a private pupil of Donald Tovey, Professor of music at Edinburgh, a distinguished critic and concert pianist, and a composer in his own right. Tovey encouraged the young pianist to continue her musical studies in Vienna during the 20s. Janet met her future husband François Tiessier du Cros, from an old French Protestant family while he was visiting Edinburgh. They were married in 1930, and lived in France where François was a civil engineer. In 1938 the couple, with their two young sons, were in Edinburgh again where François had a year's leave to do research in Physics. They returned to France and François joined his regiment when the war broke out. Janet and the boys stayed with her in-laws and then moved to a family cottage in the Cevennes. In this remote place, short of food and politically estranged from her husband's family, she spent most of the war. A third son was born in 1942 in Montpellier, and the couple were finally reunited in Paris in 1944. Divided Loyalties tells how Janet Teissier du Cros weathered these hard years in occupied France with courage, wit and fortitude. After the war Janet worked as a translator. Her fourth child, a daughter was born in 1946, and her husband returned to the study of Physics the following year. During the 1950s Janet contributed monthly broadcasts from Paris for BBC Woman's Hour, and Divided Loyalties, her only book, was published to considerable acclaim and Book Society recommendation in 1962. She is buried at the family home in Mandiargues.

Review :
One of the vividest pictures of everyday life during the Occupation years that I remember ... An extraordinarily intelligent and attractive book. This is a book to treasure, not only for its obvious and thrilling interest, but for its personal and spiritual value, and the sheer quality of its writing.