A few formidable ladies of history

 

We have, in general, been led to believe that women are the weaker sex. If we look at women over the last 1000 years, there are so many unsung influential women, it is impossible to even scratch the surface in a blogpost.

It is quite irritating that going back to before the 17th century, we only tend to know about women who were either royal or notorious. In the royal category, we can put Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1190, at the age of around 65, Eleanor rode across the alps in winter to Navarre to fetch Berengaria and escort her to her wedding with Eleanor’s favourite son, Richard the Lionheart.

Another doting royal mother comes into the category of formidable women. Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII. She worked tirelessly at the courts of Edward IV and later Richard III ensuring that Henry, in exile in Brittany, was kept abreast of events. When Richard’s blunt way of dealing with people made him so unpopular, Margaret steered her son’s journey from exile to the throne and the formation of the Tudor dynasty in 1485.

In the notorious category, I have to mention Cleopatra who is alleged to have said ‘I will not be triumphed over.’ She was—mythbuster—not beautiful but struck Julius Caesar and Mark Antony with her wit and charm. Another memorable woman is Bess of Hardwick, who survived four husbands, growing very wealthy in the process. A close friend of Elizabeth I, she also remodelled Chatsworth and built Hardwick Hall.

Moving forwards to the 20th century, Emmeline Pankhurst endured horrendous abuse in Holloway Prison when she went on hunger strike to win votes for women. And here I must mention Rosa Parks the African-American civil rights activist who in 1955 refused to give her seat on the bus to a white man. Hands up who knows the name Professor Sarah Gilbert. She is the scientist who designed the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine in an unbelievably short time and has saved countless lives.

Another group of heroic women who have only lately been acknowledged, worked tirelessly in constant danger to help the allies win World War II. I refer, of course, to the women agents of SOE. Some of these agents are now household names. Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine was the first female radio operator infiltrated into France. She was betrayed to the Gestapo, escaped at least twice, and was finally kept in chains and tortured for information. She revealed nothing. Her final word before being shot in the head was Liberté.

Most female agents were awarded civilian MBEs by the war office. Noor was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1946 and only in 1949 did the British government award her a George Cross. Violette Szabo was also posthumously awarded a George Cross. She is noted for keeping up the morale of other captured agents. She, along with Denise Bloch and Lilian Rolfe, were executed in Ravensbruck by being shot. Bloch and Rolfe were so harshly treated, they were carried to their deaths on stretchers. For anyone interested in reading more, I heartily recommend Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks. I have read thousands of books but this one is definitely in my personal Top Ten.

It was reading about the heroines of SOE that inspired me to write Distant Shadows. Although the main action of the book takes place in 1953, my heroine, Peggy, was a radio operator in France in 1944, whose Paris cell was betrayed to the Nazis. She escaped but returned to England spitting accusations of treachery and was swiftly bundled out of SOE. Now in 1953, Peggy has uncovered a fraudulent operation relating to the assignment of contracts in the rebuilding of London. Outraged at the cynical duplicity of the perpetrators, Peggy writes anonymously to her old SOE supervisor. But in so doing, has she enabled the traitor from 1944 to find her again?

Distant Shadows is available here: https://bookgoodies.com/a/B09CQ1G9GY

 

 

How a passing interest in SOE became a passion to write a mystery/thriller

 

Writing Distant Shadows was a joy. My way of paying tribute to the lost agents of SOE in the second world war.

 I have long been interested in the brave actions of the FANYs (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) in WW2. The women agents who carried on their tradecraft under the noses of the Gestapo and, in France, the Milice, the French political paramilitary organisation formed to fight against the French Resistance.

 These brave women suffered in the torture chambers of Nazi concentration camps. Beaten, tortured, worked to death on starvation rations, they often ended their lives by being shot in the back of the head or given lethal injections and their bodies burned. For this, they were, in the main, awarded MBEs, apart from Noor Inayat Khan, Codename Madeleine, who was still regarded as “missing” in 1946.

 Despite opposition from Whitehall, Vera Atkins, from SOE F Section, insisted on going to France and Germany to find out what had happened to “her” girls. It was also at her insistence that the War Office agreed to award the agents honours and for them to be regarded as “killed in action”. She also persuaded the authorities to honour Noor Inayat Khan with a George Cross in 1949. These agents were incredibly brave, while being incredibly modest about their part in the allied victory. And even when security restrictions were eased, few ever spoke about their time as agents.

 This was my starting point for Distant Shadows. And the more research I did, the more determined I became to write a book with an ex-SOE agent, who had escaped from Paris, as its protagonist. 

 Distant Shadows grew from the usual what-if?s that drop into writers’ heads. What if one agent escaped, aided by her superior in England? What if her accusations of treachery and betrayal were covered up by the top brass and she was hustled out of SOE? What if she knew her life was in peril from the traitor, so decided to change her name and disappear? And then the final what if? What if she recognised a pattern of fraudulent activity in the bestowal of government building contracts and decided, nine years after going into obscurity, to stand up for her principles at the start of a new Elizabethan age, and bring the fraud to light?

 For anyone interested in reading about the FANYs and Vera Atkins, I can recommend:

 Sarah Helm: A Life in Secrets: the story of Vera Atkins and the lost agents of SOE.

Marcus Binney: The Women Who Lived For Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War.

 There is a memorial to the lost FANYs at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London. More information here: Women's Transport Service (FANY) : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London

 And here is the precis of the book that came out of all those what-ifs!

 Distant Shadows:

 It’s the day before the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The dawn of a new Elizabethan era. It is also the day Peggy Palmer, formerly Agent Claudette sent to Paris by the Special Operations Executive, decides she has no option but to bring the corrupt building scam by Knowles Bros. into the light of day. Who can she ask to help? Who will believe an almost 30-something spinster, firmly on the shelf by most people’s standards?

 Peggy decides to contact her old SOE supervisor, now Sir Andrew Kingsley, put to work in an out of the way government department. Peggy’s anonymous letter starts a chain reaction that brings the distant shadows of her time as a radio operator in Paris in 1944 back into her current life. And with shadows come memories she has tried to forget. Of her lover, taken by the Gestapo, tortured and murdered. Of the traitor in the ranks she is still convinced betrayed them all.

 She has made a point of becoming unmemorable in the 9 years since her accusations of treachery were dismissed by the top brass. 9 years since she decided it was safer to disappear, change her name and her job. More than once. Distant shadows fed by long memories.

 And will those distant shadows revive the spectre of the traitor who betrayed her Paris cell; who condemned the love of her life to end his on the end of a Gestapo butcher’s hook? Can Peggy trust Sir Andrew who seems almost too anxious to stay close to her? What is he afraid of? And why is successful thriller writer Noah Keyes, another of her SOE trainers, equally anxious to be at the centre of the action?

 What avalanche has Peggy’s decision to write that letter begun? And will she survive the fallout?

 Distant Shadows is available here: - https://bookgoodies.com/a/B09CQ1G9GY