Nigel Perrin

Book Reviews

Quite simply the most outstanding study of a special forces hero to appear in years
Eastern Daily Press

Anyone who wants to understand why and how so many apparently ordinary people displayed such extraordinary courage and determination should read Perrin's book...an admirable (re)introduction to this forgotten world
The Times Literary Supplement

Nigel Perrin​'s telling of the life of Harry Peulevé, one of the genuine heroes of SOE's French section, makes for arresting reading...the story of this hero's career is an engaging and useful work
Journal of Military History

Harry Peulevé was one of the most determined and courageous 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 secret organisation formed by Churchill to carry out sabotage behind enemy lines and 'set Europe ablaze'.

Trained as a radio operator - a role with an average life expectancy of just six weeks - he was parachuted into France. His mission turned out to be a disaster, breaking a leg on landing. With the Vichy police hunting for him, he crossed the Pyrenees on crutches and made it to England eight months later, more driven than ever to prove himself.

In London Harry met and fell in love with the beautiful SOE heroine Violette Szabo, but both of them soon returned to France on separate missions. In spite of all attempts by the Gestapo to catch him Harry built up a secret army of thousands of resistance fighters in south-western France, but he was given away by an informer before D-Day. He remained silent under dreadful torture at the notorious SS headquarters in Paris, before being deported with the captured Violette and dozens of other SOE agents to Germany, destined for extermination in concentration camps.

In one of the most extraordinary and overlooked escapes of the war, Harry narrowly avoided execution in Buchenwald's horrific 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Drawing on Peulevé's unpublished memoirs and written with the support of Harry's family, Nigel Perrin's Spirit of Resistance is the moving story of one of SOE​'s truly legendary characters,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.