Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France (P.S. (Paperback)) - Softcover

"Once I started it I was hooked. And when I realised that she hadn't been a brave and beautiful spy, I was double-hooked. Its truth is necessary and essential, and makes the last chapters terrifyingly poignant and moving."--Julian Barnes, author of The Sense of an Ending

"As Shakespeare does his research, the mystery of Priscilla begins to recede....She is revealed as possibly less worthy-but maybe more intriguing...Our hunger to know what she thought and felt is a tribute to just how much of her he has been able to put on the page."--New York Times

"The story that unfolded is remarkable, and his account of it is riveting....Priscilla is, like almost all biographies, necessarily incomplete, but as a picture of France during the dark years of the occupation it is wonderfully full of light and shade, sympathetic and highly intelligent."--Wall Street Journal

"Fascinating....Shakespeare probes his aunt's wartime years with finesse and pathos....His reconstruction of Priscilla's life is meticulous and tantalizing."--Boston Globe

"Shakespeare has employed all his superb gifts to tell the picaresque tale of his aunt in 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 Hastings

"Thrilling.....An intimate family memoir, a story of survival and a quest for biographical truth."--Tatler

"A fine book, full of hurried journeys and secret liaisons, by one of Britain's best writers."--Conde Nast Traveller

"A gripping narrative....Shakespeare 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."--London Sunday Times

"Gripping....[An] extraordinary voyage into the truth....Priscilla brilliantly exposes the tangled complexities behind that question so easily asked from the comfort of a peacetime armchair: 'What would I have done?'"--The Observer

"A tantalizingly original perspective of the Second World War....In his engaging detective story, as he pieces Priscilla's war years together, Shakespeare shines a moving, intriguing light on the moral quandaries faces by ordinary citizens."--London Sunday Times, Best Book of the Year Citation