|
The Starr Affair
''The Starr Affair'' is a 1954 book written by Jean Overton Fuller. It was published by Victor Gollancz. It tells the story John Renshaw Starr, an officer of the British Special Operations Executive sent to establish the Acrobat Network in north-eastern France during the Second World War. He was subsequently captured, tortured and imprisoned in Fresnes prison, at 84 Avenue Foch and in Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ... concentration camps. It is based on the subject's own account of his activities, captivity and survival and the subsequent investigations concerning his suspected collaboration with the enemy. Notes 1954 British novels Novels set during World War II Victor Gollancz Ltd books {{1950s-WWII-novel-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Overton Fuller
Jean Overton Fuller (7 March 1915 – 8 April 2009) was a British author best known for her book ''Madeleine'', the story of Noor Inayat Khan, an Allied SOE agent during the Second World War. Biography Fuller was born in England on 7 March 1915, the posthumous and only child of an Indian Army officer. Brought up to think for herself by her mother, who was an artist, and a grandfather who was a retired Army doctor she early developed a wide field of interests. Following a short-lived career as a repertory actress she studied phonetics, linguistics and astronomy, and graduated with honours from the University of London. Later, in 1947-8, she studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. In the 1930s she became a member of the poetry circle of Victor Benjamin Neuburg, whose biography she wrote. Fuller was a friend of the Inayat Khan family. During the Second World War, she was employed by the British Postal Censorship Office in London. At the end of hostilities, she travelled extensive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz (; 9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher and humanitarian. Gollancz was known as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between liberalism and communism, but he defined himself as a Christian socialist and internationalist. He used his publishing house chiefly to promote pacifist and socialist non-fiction, and also launched the Left Book Club. In the postwar era, he focused his attention on Germany and became known for his promotion of friendship and reconciliation based on his internationalism and his ethic of brotherly love. He founded the organisation Save Europe Now (SEN) in 1945 to campaign for humane treatment of German civilians, and drew attention to their suffering, especially children, and atrocities committed against German civilians. He received an honorary doctorate at the University of Frankfurt in 1949, the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz of Germany in 1953 and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1960 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Renshaw Starr
John Ashford Renshaw Starr (6 August 1908 – 1996), code names Emile and Bob, was a British artist and an agent in France of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization during World War II. He was the organiser (leader) of the Acrobat network (or circuit) which operated in Dijon. The purpose of SOE in occupied France was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Starr was wounded and captured by the German SS on 18 July 1943 and imprisoned for the remainder of the war. After World War II, Starr was accused by several other SOE agents of collaboration with the Germans while he was a captive. John Starr's brother George Starr was also an SOE agent. Early life Starr was born in Heaton Moor, Lancashire,''1911 England Census'' the son of an American father, Alfred Demarest Starr, a bookkeeper who became a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a secret British World War II organisation. It was officially formed on 22 July 1940 under Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton, from the amalgamation of three existing secret organisations. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe (and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia) against the Axis powers, and to aid local resistance movements. Few people were aware of SOE's existence. Those who were part of it or liaised with it were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. It was also known as "Churchill's Secret Army" or the "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare". Its various branches, and sometimes the organisation as a whole, were concealed for security purposes behind names such as the "Joint Technical Board" or the "Inter-Service Research Bureau", or fictitious branches of the Air Ministry, Admiralty or War Office. SOE operated ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acrobat Network
Acrobatics () is the performance of human feats of balance, agility, and motor coordination. Acrobatic skills are used in performing arts, sporting events, and martial arts. Extensive use of acrobatic skills are most often performed in acro dance, circus, and gymnastics, and to a lesser extent in other athletic activities including ballet, slacklining and diving. Although acrobatics is most commonly associated with human body performance, the term is used to describe other types of performance, such as aerobatics. History Acrobatic traditions are found in many cultures, and there is evidence that the earliest such traditions occurred thousands of years ago. For example, Minoan art from c. 2000 BC contains depictions of acrobatic feats on the backs of bulls. Ancient Greeks practiced acrobatics, and the noble court displays of the European Middle Ages would often include acrobatic performances that included juggling. In China, acrobatics have been a part of the cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its Metropolitan France, metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin (island), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fresnes Prison
Fresnes Prison ('' French Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes'') is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne, south of Paris. It comprises a large men's prison (''maison d'arrêt'') of about 1200 cells, a smaller one for women and a penitentiary hospital. Fresnes is one of the three main prisons of the Paris area, Fleury-Mérogis (Europe's largest prison) and La Santé (located in Paris) being the other two. History The prison was constructed between 1895 and 1898 according to a design devised by architect Henri Poussin. An example of the so-called "telephone-pole design," the facility was radically different from previous prisons. At Fresnes prison, for the first time, cell houses extended crosswise from a central corridor. The design was used extensively in North America for much of the next century. During World War II, Fresnes prison was used by the Germans to house captured British SOE agents and members of the French Resistance. Held ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
84 Avenue Foch
84 Avenue Foch (german: Avenue Foch vierundachtzig) was the Parisian headquarters of the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD), the counter-intelligence branch of the SS during the German occupation of Paris in World War II. Avenue Foch is a wide residential boulevard in the 16th arrondissement that connects the Arc de Triomphe with the Porte Dauphine on the border with the Bois de Boulogne. During the German occupation of Northern France, the buildings at numbers 82 and 86, either side of 84, were also commandeered by the German occupation forces. Counter espionage activities Number 84 was used for the interrogation of allied SOE agents captured in France. Prisoners were regularly brought to the building from Fresnes prison on the outskirts of the city. The second floor was used by the SD's wireless unit known as Section IV. It was under the control of Dr. Josef Goetz. The SD used captured allied wireless sets to transmit bogus coded messages in attempts to flush out resistance gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners throughout World War II. Prominent prisoners included Joseph Stalin's oldest son, Yakov Dzhugashvili; assassin Herschel Grynszpan; Paul Reynaud, the penultimate Prime Minister of France; Francisco Largo Caballero, Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War; the wife and children of the Crown Prince of Bavaria; Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera; and several enemy soldiers and political dissidents. Sachsenhausen was a labor camp, outfitted with several subcamps, a gas chamber, and a medical experimentation area. Prisoners were treated inhumanely, fed inadequately, and killed openly. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used by the NKVD as NKVD ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mauthausen Concentration Camp
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further Subcamp (SS), subcamps located throughout Austria and southern Germany. The three Gusen concentration camps in and around the village of Sankt Georgen an der Gusen, St Georgen/Gusen, just a few kilometres from Mauthausen, held a significant proportion of prisoners within the camp complex, at times exceeding the number of prisoners at the Mauthausen main camp. The Mauthausen main camp operated from 8 August 1938, several months after the German annexation of Austria, to 5 May 1945, when it was liberated by the United States Army. Starting with the camp at Mauthausen, the number of subcamps expanded over time. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1954 British Novels
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-powered submarine, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Mauthausen Concentration Camp")
