Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France
&#8220;Once I started it I was hooked. And when I realised that she hadn&#8217;t been a brave and beautiful spy, I was double-hooked. Its truth is necessary and essential, and makes the last chapters terrifyingly poignant and moving.&#8221; (Julian Barnes, author ofThe Sense of an Ending)&#8220;A fascinating, complicated story.&#8221; (Entertainment Weekly)&#8220;Gripping.&#8221; (New York Times Book Review)&#8220;A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer&#8217;s unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person&#8217;s frailty in the face of terrible odds.&#8221; (John le Carr&#xE9;)&#8220;A gripping excavation of a woman&#8217;s secret past,Priscillais also a fascinating portrait of France during the second world war, and of the many shadowy and corrupt deals made by the French with their Nazi occupiers.&#8221; (Caroline Moorehead)&#8220;As Shakespeare does his research, the mystery of Priscilla begins to recede....She is revealed as possibly less worthy-but maybe more intriguing&#8230;Our hunger to know what she thought and felt is a tribute to just how much of her he has been able to put on the page.&#8221; (New York Times)&#8220;The story that unfolded is remarkable, and his account of it is riveting&#8230;.Priscilla is, like almost all biographies, necessarily incomplete, but as a picture of France during the dark years of the occupation it is wonderfully full of light and shade, sympathetic and highly intelligent.&#8221; (Wall Street Journal)&#8220;Fascinating&#8230;.Shakespeare probes his aunt&#8217;s wartime years with finesse and pathos&#8230;.His reconstruction of Priscilla&#8217;s life is meticulous and tantalizing.&#8221; (Boston Globe)&#8220;This mysterious story of the Occupation in France has all the qualities of a fascinating novel, with exquisite social, sexual and moral nuance.&#8221; (Antony Beevor)&#8220;InPriscilla, Nicholas Shakespeare captures the soul of a young Englishwoman who, to survive in Nazi-occupied France, is forced to make choices which few in England ever had to face. She remained her own unflinching judge and jury to the end.&#8221; (Charlotte Rampling)&#8220;Shakespeare has employed all his superb gifts to tell the picaresque tale of his aunt in occupied France. Priscilla is a femme fatale worthy of fiction, and the author traces her tangled, troubled, romantic and often tragically unromantic experiences through one of the most dreadful periods of 20th century history.&#8221; (Max Hastings)&#8220;Extraordinary true story of the author&#8217;s aunt. A life of dark secrets, glamour, adventure and adversity during wartime.&#8221; (Woman & Home)&#8220;Thrilling.&#8230;.An intimate family memoir, a story of survival and a quest for biographical truth.&#8221; (Tatler)&#8220;Remarkable&#8230;.A detailed and vivid narrative. This is a moving, and constantly surprising story.&#8221; (The Independent)&#8220;A fine book, full of hurried journeys and secret liaisons, by one of Britain&#8217;s best writers.&#8221; (Conde Nast Traveller)&#8220;A wonderful book&#8230;.I have not read a better portrait of the moral impossibility of that time and place for people, like Priscilla, who found themselves trapped in it.&#8221; (Daily Telegraph)&#8220;A gripping narrative&#8230;.Shakespeare offers a nuanced and detailed psychological study of the effect of the Second World War on an ordinary woman. The result is just as absorbing as any biography of a war hero.&#8221; (London Sunday Times)&#8220;Letters, journals and memories of family and friends are woven seamlessly with accounts of life in occupied Paris to reveal the precarious existence of a British woman in France during World War II&#8230;.Intriguing.&#8221; (Daily Express)&#8220;Gripping&#8230;.[An] extraordinary voyage into the truth&#8230;.Priscillabrilliantly exposes the tangled complexities behind that question so easily asked from the comfort of a peacetime armchair: &#8216;What would I have done?&#8217;&#8221; (The Observer)&#8220;[A] wonderfully readable quest for answers&#8230;.[Shakespeare] builds a nuanced, sensitive portrait of this sad and glamorous member of his family&#8230;.As the life of Priscilla shows, surviving the occupation was too complicated an affair for any black-and-white verdict.&#8221; (The Economist)&#8220;A tantalizingly original perspective of the Second World War&#8230;.In his engaging detective story, as he pieces Priscilla&#8217;s war years together, Shakespeare shines a moving, intriguing light on the moral quandaries faces by ordinary citizens.&#8221; (London Sunday Times, Best Book of the Year Citation)&#8220;Impossible to put down.&#8221; (Mail on Sunday, a Book of the Year Pick)&#8220;An excellently researched, beautifully written and unflinching memoir.&#8221; (Evening News, (UK))&#8220;Mesmerising&#8230;.A tremendous portrait of a world of war that is only ever glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. It is a haunting, powerful book about the gaps in the record and about the terrible abysses that are revealed when they are filled in.&#8221; (Sydney Morning Herald)