This special evening marked the close of the week-long programme of Brighton's Secret Agents events, and for this one the Royal Pavilion had partnered with The Secret WW2 Learning Network, City Books and the University of Sussex Resistance Studies Network to invite Paddy Ashdown to present and discuss his latest book.
Game of Spies: The Secret Agent, the Traitor and the Nazi is Paddy's gripping account of a never-before-told slice of French history that reveals a lethal spy triangle in 1940’s Bordeaux. It tells the story of France’s greatest betrayal by aristocratic and right-wing Resistance leader André Grandclément, and the role of an SOE agent caught up in treachery, bed-hopping and executions.
The talk in the Royal Pavilion’s magnificent Music Room was introduced by the university's Dr Chris Warne, and the fact that our celebrity speaker chose not to make use of the sound system meant that this became an even more informal session that could easily have been advertised as "Paddy Ashdown unplugged" !
The French resistance specialist (and founding Trustee of this charity) Prof Rod Kedward was in the audience and during Paddy Ashdown's talk, and also during the Q&A, he acknowledged Rod's enormous help with Game Of Spies.