Victoire

Philipps, Roland

£10.99

Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carré, codenamed ‘the cat’, known as Agent Victoire. She is a charismatic spy; her story is one of resistance and survival. These are the darkest days for France, half occupied by Nazi Germany, half run by the collaborationist Vichy regime; and dark days for Britain – isolated and under threat of invasion. Mathilde and her Polish conspirator, Roman Czerniawski, have risked torture and execution to build the first Allied intelligence network in Occupied France. With no training and little support, they have in a few months developed a huge system of agents. Their coded weekly reports are London’s sole lifeline of reliable information. Mathilde is determined to be her nation’s saviour, and what the partners build is central to Intelligence and Resistance efforts.

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Publish Date: 03/03/2022

Description

‘The wartime spy career of Mathilde Carré – aka “the Cat” and “Agent Victoire” – is so extraordinary it almost defies belief’ The Times

An exhilarating true story of espionage, resistance, and one of WW2’s most charismatic double-agents.

Occupied Paris, 1940. A woman in a red hat and a black fur coat hurries down a side-street. She is Mathilde Carré, codenamed ‘the Cat’, later known as Agent Victoire – charismatic, daring and a spy.

These are the darkest days for France, yet Mathilde is driven by a sense of destiny that she will be her nation’s saviour. Soon, she is at the centre of the first great Allied intelligence network of the Second World War.

But as Roland Philipps shows in this extraordinary account of her life, when the Germans close in, Mathilde makes a desperate and dangerous compromise. Nobody – not her German handler, nor the Resistance and the British – can be certain where her allegiances now lie…

‘A truly astonishing story, meticulously and brilliantly told’ Philippe Sands, author of The Ratline

‘Gripping… Enough plot twists and moral ambiguity to satisfy any spy novelist’ Spectator

Additional information

Weight 320 g
Dimensions 198 × 130 × 24 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

352 , 16 unnumbered of plates

Language

English

Edition
Dewey

940.548644092 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K