The Book Club: Victoire

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4 • 785 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this week's Book club podcast Sam's guest is Roland Philipps - whose new book Victoire: A Wartime Story of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal tells the morally murky and humanly fascinating story of Mathilde Carre - a vital figure of the early days of resistance in occupied France. Roland's story describes her heroic early work; and its undoing when she was captured and turned collaborator... before she saw, in the figure of an agent for the British secret services, the opportunity for a triple-cross and the hope of redemption.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Spectator is Europe's fastest growing current affairs magazine.
0:04.0	Subscribe today and find out why.
0:06.3	You'll get 12 weeks in print and online for just £12.
0:10.0	Plus, we'll send you a bottle of Spectator gin worth £30.
0:13.8	So you do the math, your workout that is absolutely free.
0:16.8	Go to www.spotator.com.com.com.
0:21.6	GERr.
0:26.5	Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast.
0:32.5	I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.
0:34.9	And this week, my guest is Roland Phillips, his new book
0:38.9	tells the story of Matilde Carre, one of the most complex and interesting spies of the Second
0:46.1	World War. It's called Victoire, a wartime story of resistance, collaboration, and betrayal.
0:53.8	Roland, welcome.
0:54.8	Can you tell me what attracted you?
0:57.0	What particularly stands out about Mathieu de Carre's story,
1:01.7	among all the many SOE and espionage stories of the war?
1:05.0	Well, what I wanted to do was I've always been fascinated by double agents,
1:10.6	those people who have the ability to
1:12.7	persuade one side that they're working for them and, in fact, they're working for another
1:18.3	side. And I was also thinking about how our view of the war is very black and white, really. British, good, Germans, bad on the whole.
1:31.2	So what got me interested in the notion of finding someone in France, which, of course, had a very
1:38.3	different war occupied France, the north of France, because often to collaborate that filthy word was the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Spectator, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Spectator and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.