Nigel Perrin

Spirit of Resistance

The Life of SOE Agent Harry Peulevé

Harry Peulevé was one of the most remarkable British secret agents of the Second World War. A former BBC cameraman, he was deeply traumatised by his experiences during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. Determined to erase the humiliation he felt after the fall of France, Harry volunteered for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which sent agents behind enemy lines to encourage resistance and 'set Europe ablaze'.

Parachuting into France in 1942 he broke a leg on landing but made an amazing escape back to London, crossing the Pyrenees on crutches and later breaking out of a Spanish jail. He fell in love with SOE heroine Violette Szabo but volunteered for a second mission, to lead a secret army of resistance fighters and sabotage enemy targets across south-western France. Given away by an informer, he remained silent under dreadful torture before being deported to Germany with Violette, both destined for extermination in concentration camps.

In one of the most extraordinary escapes of the war, Harry narrowly avoided execution by making a pact with an infamous Nazi doctor. Disguised as a French prisoner, he would endure months in a punishment camp before making another daring escape to reach the American lines and discover Violette's fate.

Drawing on Peulevé's unpublished memoirs and written with the support of his family, Nigel Perrin's Spirit of Resistance is the moving story of one of SOE's truly legendary characters.

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