Spirit of Resistance

The Life of SOE Agent Harry Peulevé

Harry Peulevé was one of the most remarkable 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 to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE) - a British secret service formed to carry out sabotage behind enemy lines and 'set Europe ablaze'.

Parachuting into France in 1942 he badly 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. During the summer of 1943 Harry 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 before D-Day, he remained silent under dreadful torture before being deported to Germany, joining 36 other agents destined for extermination in Buchenwald concentration camp.

In one of the most extraordinary escapes of the war, Harry narrowly avoided execution in Buchenwald's human experimental unit by making a pact with a Nazi doctor. Disguising himself as a French prisoner, he would spend months enduring the brutalities of 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Drawing on Peulevé´s unpublished memoirs and written with the support of his family, Nigel Perrin's Spirit of Resistance is the moving story of one of SOE's truly legendary characters, and is the result of more than two years' painstaking research across Europe.