Zusatztext Remarkable. -- The New York Times Book Review This poignant reconstruction...has all the tensions of a contemporary mystery. -- The Philadelphia Inquirer Wrenching...thoroughly captivating...reminds one of the novels of Michael Ondaatje. -- The Washington Times Informationen zum Autor Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (UK) and the bestselling author of Agent Sonya, The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Rogue Heroes , and Prisoners of the Castle, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work. Klappentext In the first terrifying days of World War I, four British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the western front. They were forced to hide in the tiny French village of Villeret, whose inhabitants made the courageous decision to shelter the fugitives until they could pass as Picard peasants. The Englishman's Daughter is the never-before-told story of these extraordinary men, their protectors, and of the haunting love affair between Private Robert Digby and Claire Dessenne, the most beautiful woman in Villeret. Their passion would result in the birth of a child known as "The Englishman's Daughter, and in an act of unspeakable betrayal, a tragic legacy that would haunt the village for generations to come. Through the testimonies of the villagers and the last letters of the soldiers, acclaimed journalist Ben Macintyre has pieced together a harrowing account of how life was lived behind enemy lines during the Great War, and offers a compelling solution to a gripping mystery that reverberates to this day. Chapter One The Angels of Mons On a balmy evening at the end of August in the year 1914, four young soldiers of the British armytwo Englishmen and a pair of Irishmencrouched in terror under a hedgerow near the Somme River in northern France, painfully adjusting to the realisation that they were profoundly and hopelessly lost, adrift in a briefly tranquil no-man's-land somewhere between their retreating comrades and the rapidly advancing German army, the largest concentration of armed men the world had ever seen. Privates Digby, Thorpe, Donohoe, and Martin were small human shards from a mighty explosion that had been primed for years, expected by many, desired by some, and detonated just six weeks earlier when a young Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip pulled a revolver in a Sarajevo back street and mortally wounded Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary. Europe was now ablaze, and the first battles of a long and brutal war had been fought. The lamps were going out all over Europe, but in the small town of Villeret, deep in the Picardy countryside, the lamps were just being lit, watched, from under a hedge, by four pairs of hungry British eyes. The four Tommies, of whom the oldest was only thirty-six, had barely a clue of their whereabouts, but knew well enough that they were not supposed to be there. According to official military theory, they should have been at least one hundred miles north, in Belgium, winning a swift and decisive victory against the Hun. But, then, the war was not going according to plan: neither the Schlieffen Plan, dreamed up by a dead German aristocrat, to encircle France rapidly from the north; nor France's Plan XVII, which called for the gallant French soldiery to attack the enemy with such élan that the Germans would immediately lose heart; nor the British plan, to defend Belgian neutrality, support the French, reinforce the might of the British Empire, and then go home. Barely a fortnight earlier, the British Expeditionary Force, or BEF (this was a war that appreciated a clipped acronym), had begun crossing the Channel in troopships, to be met with be...

8220;Remarkable.”

--*The New York Times Book Review

*“This poignant reconstruction...has all the tensions of a contemporary mystery.”
--*The Philadelphia Inquirer

*”Wrenching...thoroughly captivating...reminds one of the novels of Michael Ondaatje.”
--*The Washington Times

Auteur
Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (UK) and the bestselling author of Agent Sonya, The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Rogue Heroes, and Prisoners of the Castle, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.

Texte du rabat

In the first terrifying days of World War I, four British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the western front. They were forced to hide in the tiny French village of Villeret, whose inhabitants made the courageous decision to shelter the fugitives until they could pass as Picard peasants.

The Englishman's Daughter is the never-before-told story of these extraordinary men, their protectors, and of the haunting love affair between Private Robert Digby and Claire Dessenne, the most beautiful woman in Villeret. Their passion would result in the birth of a child known as "The Englishman's Daughter,” and in an act of unspeakable betrayal, a tragic legacy that would haunt the village for generations to come.

Through the testimonies of the villagers and the last letters of the soldiers, acclaimed journalist Ben Macintyre has pieced together a harrowing account of how life was lived behind enemy lines during the Great War, and offers a compelling solution to a gripping mystery that reverberates to this day.

Résumé
A “remarkable” (The New York Times Book Review) account of four British soldiers forced into hiding in a French village during World War I, and the mystery left behind in their wake—from the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor and The Siege.
 
“Gripping, illuminating . . . Everything comes alive . . . the feuds, the village characters [and] the hunger of the winter of 1914.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
 
In the first terrifying days of World War I, four British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the western front. They were forced to hide in the tiny French village of Villeret, whose inhabitants made the courageous decision to shelter the fugitives until they could pass as Picard peasants. 
 
This is the never-before-told story of these extraordinary men, their protectors, and of the haunting love affair between Private Robert Digby and Claire Dessenne, the most beautiful woman in Villeret. Their passion would result in the birth of a child known as “The Englishman’s Daughter,” and in an act of unspeakable betrayal, a tragic legacy that would haunt the village for generations to come. 
 
Through the testimonies of the villagers and the last letters of the soldiers, New York Times bestselling author Ben Macintyre has pieced together a harrowing account of how life was lived behind enemy lines during the Great War, and offers a compelling solution to a gripping mystery that reverberates to this day.

Échantillon de lecture
**Chapter One

The Angels of Mons

On a balmy evening at the end of August in the year 1914, four young soldiers of the British army–two Englishmen and a pair of Irishmen–crouched in terror under a hedgerow near the Somme River in northern France, painfully adjusting to the realisation that they were profoundly and hopelessly lost, adrift in a briefly tranquil no-man’s-land somewhere between their retreating comrades and the rapidly advancing German army, the largest concentration of armed men the world had ever seen.

Privates Digby, Thorpe, Donohoe, and Martin were small human shards from a mighty explosion that had been primed for years, expected by many, desired by some, and detonated just six weeks earlier when a you…