Divided loyalties

Out of the war years comes this memoir of life as a wife and mother in occupied France during World War II. In this candid and poignant account, Janet Teissier du Cros powerfully evokes the international political atmosphere of the time and its effects within her own family. As a Scotswoman married to a Frenchman, du Cros found herself enmeshed in a web of dual loyalties. The innate suspicion bred by old enmity, the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir in 1940, the handling of Dunkirk: all meant she faced far more hostility as a Briton than might be expected. Mme. du Cros writes in the main of the trials of existence, both in Southern France, where her husband Francois's family lived, and in Paris, where she joined him after his release from German imprisonment. Witty and poignant accounts of the determined joy of shared Christmases and the increased risk of bearing her third child are set against the dull throb of the progress of war, which bursts into the foreground towards the close with the Allied landings.