A Life in Secrets

During World War Two the Special Operation Executive’s French Section sent more than four hundred agents behind enemy lines. Among those who did not return were twelve young women whom Vera Atkins had helped to prepare for their missions. A Life in Secrets traces Vera’s lone search through the chaos of Allied-occupied Germany to establish the fate of the agents: a harrowing trail that led her finally to the concentration camps at Natzweiler, Ravensbrück and Dachau.

But while the woman who carried out this extraordinary mission appeared quintessentially English, she was nothing of the sort. Vera Atkins, covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past. In A Life in Secrets, Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera’s many veils.