The Englishman's DaughterThe Englishman's Daughter

In a story of courage in the face of war and oppression, the author revisits the village in northern France that protected British soldiers caught behind the lines of the German invasion forces.
In a true story of courage in the face of war and oppression, the author revisits the village in northern France that protected British soldiers caught behind the lines of the German invasion force. 15,000 first printing.
In the first terrifying days of World War I, a handful of British soldiers found themselves trapped behind enemy lines on the Western Front. Unable to rejoin their units, which were retreating under the German onslaught, they were forced to hide in the French countryside. The Englishman's Daughter is the extraordinary true story of these men, their rescuers, and the bittersweet love affair that sprang up between an enchanting French villager and a fugitive English soldier. This romance flourished under the very eyes of German occupiers, resulted in the birth of a child, and eventually tore a community apart.
"I have a rendezvous with death, at some disputed barricade." Alan Seeger, 1916

In the first days of World War I four soldiers, left behind as the British army retreated through northern France under the first German onslaught, found themselves trapped on the wrong side of the Western Front, in a tiny village called Villeret. Just a few miles from the Somme, the village would be permanently inundated with German troops for the next four years, yet the villagers conspired to feed, clothe and protect the fugitives under the very noses of the invaders, absorbing the Englishmen into their homes and lives until they could pass for Picardy peasants.

The leader of the band, Robert Digby, was a striking young man who fell in love with Claire Dessenne, the prettiest maid in the village. In November 1915, with the guns clearly audible from the battlefront, Claire gave birth to Digby's child, the jealous whispering began, and the conspiracy that had protected the soldiers for half the war started to unravel.

Never before told, The Englishman's Daughter is a harrowing tale of love, duplicity and their tragic consequences, which haunt the people of Villeret eight decades after the Great War.