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Siân Rees

Lucie Aubrac

The French Resistance Heroine Who Defied the Gestapo

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Details

Imprint: O'Mara Books

Publication date: 25/06/2015

ISBN: 9781782433873

Subject: Non-Fiction

Categories: Biographies, Science - History - Philosophy

Binding: Hardback

Size: Other

Extent: 256 pages

Territorial Rights: World (All Languages)

Edition Status: Out of Print

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Summary:

The full story of a remarkable woman who has become legendary in the history of the French Resistance.

In May 1943, a young Frenchwoman called Lucie Aubrac engineered the escape of her husband Raymond from the clutches of Klaus Barbie, the feared Gestapo chief. When Raymond was arrested again that June, Lucie mounted a second astonishing rescue, ambushing the prison van that was transporting him. Spirited out of France with her husband by the RAF, she arrived in London a heroine.

However, in 1983 Klaus Barbie made the bombshell claim that the Aubracs had become informers in 1943, betraying their comrades. The French press and the couple themselves furiously denounced this ‘slander’, but as worrying inconsistencies were spotted in Lucie’s story, doubts emerged that have never quite gone away.??

Who was Lucie Aubrac? What did she really do in 1943? And was she truly the spirit of la vraie France, or a woman who could not resist casting herself as a heroine, whatever the cost to the truth?

Siân Rees’ penetrating account is the first full English-language biography of this extraordinary woman.

Reviews:

Fascinating... Calm, judicious and gripping

Caroline Moorehead, Sunday Times

Praise for The Floating Brothel] History at its most engaging

Daily Telegraph

Praise for Sweet Water and Bitter] A fluent and lively account

Guardian

Praise for Moll] Rees is a lucid, intelligent guide

Sunday Herald

Praise for The Ship Thieves] In Rees's hands Porter's story reads like a fictional thriller but imparts the knowledge of a serious historical work

Times Literary Supplement

Sales points:

  • The first full English-language biography of a remarkable woman who has become legendary in the history of the French Resistance

  • Lucie Aubrac became a heroine after outwitting the Gestapo and joined the French Resistance alongside French national hero Jean Moulin during WWII, but was later accused of spying on and betraying her comrades

  • From the publishers of Rosie's War, over 45k ebooks sold

  • Siân Rees's first book, The Floating Brothel, was made into a Timewatch documentary on BBC2

  • Includes an 8pp plate section

About the Author:

Siân Rees

Siân Rees was born and brought up in Cornwall, spending much of her childhood in boatyards and at sea. She read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford. Her first book, The Floating Brothel, was written after living in Australia, and published in 2001. It was followed by The Shadows of Elisa Lynch (2003) after a stint in South America, The Ship Thieves (2006), and Sweet Water and Bitter: the ships that stopped the slave trade (2009), and Moll: the Life and Times of Moll Flanders in 2011. She lives in Brighton and France.