Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France

Nicholas Shakespeare

jan 2014 · Harper Collins

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When Nicholas Shakespeare stumbled across a box of documents belonging to his late aunt, Priscilla, he was completely unaware of where this discovery would take him and what he would learn about her hidden past. The glamorous, mysterious figure he remembered from his childhood was very different from the morally ambiguous young woman who emerged from the trove of love letters, photographs, and journals, surrounded by suitors and living the dangerous existence of a British woman in a country controlled by the enemy. He had heard rumors that Priscilla had fought in the Resistance, but the truth turned out to be far more complicated.

As he investigated his aunt's life, dark secrets emerged, and Nicholas discovered the answers to the questions over which he'd been puzzling: What caused the breakdown of Priscilla's marriage to a French aristocrat? Why had she been interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, and how had she escaped? And who was the "Otto" with whom she was having a relationship as Paris was liberated?

Piecing together fragments of one woman's remarkable and tragic life, Priscilla is at once a stunning story of detection, a loving portrait of a flawed woman trying to survive in terrible times, and a spellbinding slice of history.

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Nicholas William Shakespeare is a British novelist and biographer who was born on March 3, 1957, in Worcester. He attended Winchester College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC Television and later as an arts and literary editor for "The Times". He soon after began his writing career. His first books include The Men Who Would Be king: A Look at Royalty in Exile, Londoners, and The Vision of Elena Silves. His later works include Inheritance, Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, and Six Minutes in May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister.