FREE FRENCH IN LONDON

They were soldiers, civilians, intellectuals, journalists, scientists, merchant seamen, students ? all volunteers who, at the end of June, 1940, went to London in the hope of continuing the war against Germany alongside Britain. These outlawed civil servants of a state born from the imagination and resolve of the ?Man of June 18? aimed to represent France, the real France, the eternal France. In reality, only a handful of volunteers opposed Vichy and its servile government that had chosen to collaborate with Nazi Germany. They spent four years living and breathing the British lifestyle, far from their friends and family, cut off from their homeland in voluntary exile. They were the Free French? They had their own social life, passions, intrigues and tragedies, their own radio shows, journals and newspapers in French, their favourite restaurants and clubs where they thrived on nostalgia while awaiting better days. What was their daily life like? Who were they? How was Free French society in London organised from 1940 to 1944?