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Pan Mac finds Churchill's 'secret army'

01.01.70 | Katie Allen

Pan Macmillan has acquired the memoirs of a member of Winston Churchill's "secret army", the Special Forces Executive, which worked to support the French Resistance in the Second World War.

Publishing director Georgina Morley bought world rights in the title, They Shall Never Surrender, by Noreen Riols through Andrew Lownie. Pan Macmillan will publish in September 2013.

In 1941, Noreen received her call-up papers, and chose joining the WRENS over working in a munitions factory. However, when one of her interviewers realised she spoke fluent French, she was directed to the SOE headquarters, where she was recruited to work with Colonel Buckmaster to support the French Resistance, meeting agents returning from behind enemy lines, acting as a decoy, passing on messages in tea rooms and picking up code words in crossword puzzles.

Morley described the memoirs as "vivid, witty, insightful and often moving . . . offering readers an authentic and compelling insight into what really went on in Churchill's 'secret army' from one of its last surviving members".
 

• Charlotte Williams
• Pan Macmillan
• Rights deal