"Once I started it I was hooked. And when I realised that she hadn''t been a brave and beautiful spy, I was double-hooked. Its truth is necessary and essential, and makes the last chapters terrifyingly poignant and moving." -- Julian Barnes, author of The Sense of an Ending "A fascinating, complicated story." -- Entertainment Weekly "Gripping." -- New York Times Book Review "A most strange and compelling book driven by the writer''s unsparing search for truth: now an optimistic hunt for a family heroine, now a study in female wiles of survival, now a portrait of one very ordinary person''s frailty in the face of terrible odds." -- John le Carré "A gripping excavation of a woman''s secret past, Priscilla is also a fascinating portrait of France during the second world war, and of the many shadowy and corrupt deals made by the French with their Nazi occupiers." -- Caroline Moorehead "As Shakespeare does his research, the mystery of Priscilla begins to recede.
She is revealed as possibly less worthy-but maybe more intriguing.Our hunger to know what she thought and felt is a tribute to just how much of her he has been able to put on the page." -- New York Times "The story that unfolded is remarkable, and his account of it is riveting.Priscilla is, like almost all biographies, necessarily incomplete, but as a picture of France during the dark years of the occupation it is wonderfully full of light and shade, sympathetic and highly intelligent." -- Wall Street Journal "Fascinating.Shakespeare probes his aunt''s wartime years with finesse and pathos.His reconstruction of Priscilla''s life is meticulous and tantalizing." -- Boston Globe "This mysterious story of the Occupation in France has all the qualities of a fascinating novel, with exquisite social, sexual and moral nuance.
" -- Antony Beevor "In Priscilla , Nicholas Shakespeare captures the soul of a young Englishwoman who, to survive in Nazi-occupied France, is forced to make choices which few in England ever had to face. She remained her own unflinching judge and jury to the end." -- Charlotte Rampling "Shakespeare has employed all his superb gifts to tell the picaresque tale of his aunt in occupied France. Priscilla is a femme fatale worthy of fiction, and the author traces her tangled, troubled, romantic and often tragically unromantic experiences through one of the most dreadful periods of 20th century history." -- Max Hastings "Extraordinary true story of the author''s aunt. A life of dark secrets, glamour, adventure and adversity during wartime." -- Woman & Home "Thrilling.An intimate family memoir, a story of survival and a quest for biographical truth.
" -- Tatler "Remarkable.A detailed and vivid narrative. This is a moving, and constantly surprising story." -- The Independent "A fine book, full of hurried journeys and secret liaisons, by one of Britain''s best writers." -- Conde Nast Traveller "A wonderful book.I have not read a better portrait of the moral impossibility of that time and place for people, like Priscilla, who found themselves trapped in it." -- Daily Telegraph "A gripping narrative.Shakespeare offers a nuanced and detailed psychological study of the effect of the Second World War on an ordinary woman.
The result is just as absorbing as any biography of a war hero." -- London Sunday Times "Letters, journals and memories of family and friends are woven seamlessly with accounts of life in occupied Paris to reveal the precarious existence of a British woman in France during World War II.Intriguing." -- Daily Express "Gripping.[An] extraordinary voyage into the truth. Priscilla brilliantly exposes the tangled complexities behind that question so easily asked from the comfort of a peacetime armchair: ''What would I have done?''" -- The Observer "[A] wonderfully readable quest for answers.[Shakespeare] builds a nuanced, sensitive portrait of this sad and glamorous member of his family.As the life of Priscilla shows, surviving the occupation was too complicated an affair for any black-and-white verdict.
" -- The Economist "A tantalizingly original perspective of the Second World War.In his engaging detective story, as he pieces Priscilla''s war years together, Shakespeare shines a moving, intriguing light on the moral quandaries faces by ordinary citizens." -- London Sunday Times , Best Book of the Year Citation "Impossible to put down." -- Mail on Sunday , a Book of the Year Pick "An excellently researched, beautifully written and unflinching memoir." -- Evening News , (UK) "Mesmerising.A tremendous portrait of a world of war that is only ever glimpsed out of the corner of an eye. It is a haunting, powerful book about the gaps in the record and about the terrible abysses that are revealed when they are filled in." -- Sydney Morning Herald.