Priscilla

A pin-sharp biography which unfurls like gripping fiction… wonderful, haunting, thought-provoking – Melanie Reid * The Times *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… A wonderful book * Daily Telegraph *As Shakespeare acknowledges, his aunt’s is one of millions of wartime stories. But thanks to the extensive paperwork, and his energetic digging, he creates a detailed and vivid narrative. This is a moving, and constantly surprising story – Matthew Bell * Independent on Sunday *So gripping it reads like a novel – Rachel Johnson * Evening Standard *This mysterious story of the Occupation in France has all the qualities of a fascinating novel, with exquisite social, sexual and moral nuance – Antony BeevorShakespeare 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 * Sunday Times *Nicholas Shakespeare has employed all his superb gifts as a writer to tell the picaresque tale of his aunt in wartime 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 HastingsPriscilla brilliantly exposes the tangled complexities behind that question so easily asked from the comfort of a peacetime armchair: “What would I have done?” * Observer *Priscilla’s descent into hell runs eerily parallel to that of France itself; Faustian, fascinating and in the end extremely sad – Sebastian Faulks * Observer, Books of the Year *An account of the author’s aunt’s life in France under the Nazis. Her descent parallels that of France: Grim but fascinating – Sebastian Faulks * Observer *

Nicholas Shakespeare was born in Worcester in 1957 and grew up in the Far East and Latin America. He is a prize-winning novelist and biographer and Priscilla draws on his talents in both genres.