Publisher details

Author: R J Minney
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9781848847422

Carve Her Name With Pride

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Synopsis

Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris Iin 1921 to an English motorcar dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940.Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police. On June 7th, 1944, Szabo was parachuted into Limoges. Her task was to coordinate the work of the French Resistance in the area in the first days after D-Day.She was captured by the SS 'Das Reich' Panzer Division and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris for interrogation. From Paris, Violette Szabo was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed in January 1945. She was only 23 and for her courage was posthumously awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

About the author

R J Minney

R J Minney is an accomplished novelist, biographer, playwright and film producer. Educated at King's College, London, where he studied History, he has lectured in a number of universities and has broadcast in many countries.His extensive travels include a journey to Tibet on horseback across the Himalayas. He was the first to fly across India in a plane that arrived in a packing case, and has been to Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya, East Africa, Morocco, Egypt, the Middle East, Russia, South America, Turkey and most of the countries in Europe. He spent some time in the USA working in a film studio in Hollywood and later wrote scripts and produced films for the Rank Organisation in London.As a journalist he was editor of Everybody's, Sunday Referee and Strand Magazine. The films he produced include The Wicked Lady, Madonna of the Seven Moons,Terence Rattigan's The Final Test and A Place of One's Own, for which Rex Whistler designed the sets. Minney is also the author of Gentle Caesar, about Tsar Nicholas II, which he wrote in collaberation with Sir Osbert Sitwell, and Clive of India, a biography, play and film, in which Ronald Coleman and Loretta Young starred. Winston Churchill praised the play in a long article in the London Daily Mail.His more than thirty books include a study of Charlie Chaplin's life work entitled Chaplin - The Immortal Tramp and Carve Her Name With Pride, the work of Violette Szabo who was posthumously awarded the George Cross, also filmed.