'Our house had become an active centre for the Resistance...'

When war broke out in 1939, Simone Martin-Chauffier was a 37-year-old housewife and mother married to journalist and writer Louis Martin-Chauffier. Soon after the German invasion of France, they joined the resistance, first in Paris and then in Lyon. There, Louis and their son Jean became involved in the Libération-Sud, and from 1942, Louis edited the movement's underground newspaper. Simone's memoir is a touching chronicle of a family's daily life in France from 1940-44. It evokes the bleakness of those 'dark years', describing the struggle to survive amid widespread shortages of food and fuel, and the challenges of bringing up children in such grim circumstances while still creating moments of happiness in family life.

Their happiness was overshadowed in 1943 when Jean was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Germany, followed by Loius in 1944, to be a prisoner in the concentration camps of Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen. Distinguished French diplomatic historian, the late Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, described Simone's memoir as 'one of the most deeply moving books that exist on the Resistance'. Her characterful voice chronicles the events of war, from the German invasion through to the final joyous safe return of her family.



Martyn Cornick is Emeritus Professor of French Studies at the University of Birmingham and Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Académiques. He has published widely on French Cultural History; studies on the role of the BBC in fostering resistance in France; and is co-author of French Political Travel Writing in the Interwar Years. Radical Departures.

Richard Carswell is the author of The Fall of France in the Second World War: History and Memory. He is also the translator of: The Man Who Murdered Admiral Darlan: Vichy, the Allies and the Resistance in French North Africa by Bénédicte Vergez-Chaignon and of Operation Bribes: How Winston Churchill and Juan March Bought Franco's Generals by Ángel Viñas, the doyen of Spanish historians.