Odette
TICKELL, Jerrard
The Story of a British Agent.
THE ORIGINAL EDITION WITH PROMOTIONAL BAND
Published: Chapman & Hall, 1949
Stock code: 38989
Price: £224.00
8vo., First Edition, on laid paper, with portrait frontispiece and 16 plates on 15, mild tape-marks on free endpapers; red cloth, gilt back, a particularly well-preserved bright, clean copy in unclipped dustwrapper, the latter chipped (not affecting lettering) at head, tail and extremities, and with BS promotional band intact.
An SOE classic. Odette Churchill (nee Sansom) was one of the most famous SOE agents of WWII. Operating under the code-name 'Lise' she dropped into occupied France where she was eventually captured, imprisoned and tortured first at Fresnes and finally at Ravensbruck. One of the few FANY agents to survive the war, she was awarded the George Cross for gallantry and subsequently married fellow-SOE agent Captain Peter Churchill ('Raoul'). Foot (p.463) describes this account as 'a popular and partly fictionalised life; accurate in parts'. Certainly it is one of the half-dozen or so key works relating to SOE agents in France and the basis of Herbert Wilcox's feature film (1950) starring Anna Neagle and Trevor Howard. VERY SCARCE IN THIS CONDITION. Enser, p.401; Foot, p.463.