A new history of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

A substantial and well-received new book examining the wartime history of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, the 1983 honoree of the Roger E Joseph Prize, has been published. Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France by the biographer and human rights journalist Caroline Moorehead is the second volume of a projected trilogy on resistance in World War Two that began with A Train in Winter. Village of Secrets uses previously unseen diaries and new interviews to give a true account of how the village resisted the Vichy and Nazi collaborators. It is on these last rather than the refugees that the book sheds new light, redressing the balance of this history from the heroism of those who saved lives to revealing the precise nature of the persecution of Jews and who carried it out. The Daily Telegraph's review takes this further and sees the book as being "not so much about heroes and monsters; instead, [Moorehead] sees ordinary people responding in different ways to a world of cruelty".

The book has been reviewed by several newspapers in the UK, including the Financial Times and the Independent. It is available in the US from HarperCollins and in the UK from Chatto & Windus.