by Mike Ripley
In chapter twelve, Campion mentions that he was tempted to steal a pair of ‘Afrika Korps pyjamas’. As a young British soldier just after the war had ended, my friend Philip Purser, the television critic and thriller writer, was issued a pair of Afrika Korps pyjamas from a captured supply depot. He often boasted that they lasted him for over a decade, long after his National Service was over.
I have taken to heart Agatha Christie’s famous comment that all Margery Allingham’s books had their own separate and distinctive background and shape, and so have attempted a different narrative structure for this one. I always appreciated this would be a risk and I am indebted to my former publisher, Edwin Buckhalter of Severn House, a dedicated Campion fan, for having faith in the experiment.
Sources
Donald Caskie: The Tartan Pimpernel, Oldbourne Books, 1957.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau: The Silent World, Hamish Hamilton, 1953.
Michael Curtis: Verdict on Vichy, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002.
Isabelle Janvrin & Catherine Rawlinson: The French in London, Wilmington Square Books, 2013.
Simon Kitson: The Hunt for Nazi Spies – Fighting Espionage in Vichy France, University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Mark Mazower: Hitler’s Empire, Allen Lane, 2008.
Robert Mencherini: Ici-Même – Marseille 1940–1944, Editions Jeanne Laffitte, 2013.
Ian Ousby: Occupation, John Murray, 1997.
Colin Smith: England’s Last War Against France, Weidenfeld 2009.
Edward Stourton: Cruel Crossing, Doubleday, 2013.
