A Train in Winter

This serious and heartfelt book does deliver on its promise of a tale of how female friendship “can make the difference between living and dying”… Profound – Brian Schofield * Sunday Times *
A harrowing but also uplifting shared story of friendship, courage and endurance * Independent *
A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope. They risked their lives to defeat Fascism, by printing subversive literature, hiding Jewish friends or, in the case of one girl, simply insulting a French youth because he had decided to co-operate with the Nazis. The price they paid for their bravery was terrible. A Train in Winter could have been a sad, almost morbid book. In Moorehead’s expert hands it is a triumphant one – Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday *
Compassionate, meticulous and compulsively enthralling… This book is essential reading. The litany of names at the end, with their brief biographies (Yolande, Cecile, Poupette, Mitzy, Lucie…) reminds us weeping is not enough. It bears witness - and warns – Bel Mooney * Daily Mail *
Moorehead tells her appalling story in measured prose that sets off perfectly the reader’s growing sense of wonder that such heroism is possible * Guardian *
A remarkable and deeply affecting book * Oxford Times *
A boom which contains a wealth of historical information as well as some brilliant if horrific storytelling – John Laughland * Spectator *
A pitch-perfect study of human depravity, and of the heroism it can inspire – Maggie Fergusson * Intelligent Life *
A multiple biography and a detailed anatomy of the nature of friendship… A Train in Winter is a powerful and moving book; its significance is in bringing to a wider, non-French readership the particular and terrible fate of a group of women whose only crime was to love their country and to wish to do something to defend it, at a time when its government chose craven obedience to the occupier, with terrible consequences for so many of its people – Natasha Lehrer * Times Literary Supplement *
This is a clear-sighted, distressing and unforgettable book – Stephanie Cross * The Lady *

Caroline Moorehead is the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. Well known for her work in human rights, she has published a history of the Red Cross and a book about refugees, Human Cargo. Her most recent book, Dancing to the Precipice, a biography of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, was shorlisted for the Costa Biography Award in 2009. Caroline lives in London.

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