Victoire
Subtitle: A Wartime Story of Resistance, Collaboration and Betrayal
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Published: 2021
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9781473567955
Description: Mathilde Carre, codenamed 'La Chatte', the cat, then known as Agent Victoire, who was the exceptionally charismatic and daring founder of the 'Big Network'. This was the first Allied intelligence network in Occupied France, which soon grew central to Resistance efforts and to be a lifeline of crucial information to an isolated Britain. But her allegiances become more complex when the network is rolled up by the Germans and she makes a fateful compromise. She first becomes a double agent before later trying to persuade the British to back her as a triple agent. Mathilde's story and that of the network she helped build has never been fully told before. This book will draw on a wide range of sources including recently declassified material to do that. (Elusive to the last, she was thought to have died in 1970 but may in fact have lived as a recluse until 2007 and the age of 98.).