Code Name Verity
Page 30
There are many people who helped to make this book complete and perfect, and they all deserve tremendous thanks. Among the unsung heroes are an enlisted trio of ‘cultural’ and language advisors, Scottish, French and German: Iona O’Connor, Marie-Christine Graham and Katja Kasri, who threw themselves into their requested jobs with the enthusiasm of wartime volunteers. My husband, Tim Gatland, was my technical and flight advisor (as always), and Terry Charman of the Imperial War Museum vetted the manuscript for historical accuracy. Jonathan Habicht of The Shuttleworth Collection allowed me to get up close and personal with a Lysander and an Anson. Tori Tyrrell and Miriam Roberts were indispensable first readers. Tori actually suggested the section titles which, obvious though they are, eluded me at first. My daughter Sara suggested some of the more harrowing plot twists.
The book would not exist if not for the lovely Sharyn November, Senior Editor at Viking Children’s Books, who originally asked me to write it; and under the orchestration of my agent, Ginger Clark, the editorial teams led by Stella Paskins at Egmont UK, Catherine Onder at Disney Hyperion Books for Children, and Amy Black at Doubleday Canada coaxed Code Name Verity into its finished form.
I also feel that I should discreetly thank a score of unnamed people whose lives are woven into mine and who have influenced me over the years, friends, family, teachers and colleagues – German, French, Polish, American, Japanese, Scottish, English – Jew and Christian – who during the global conflict of the Second World War were variously Resistance fighters, camouflage unit artists, RAF fighter pilots and USAF transport pilots, child evacuees, prisoners in American as well as German concentration camps, refugees in hiding, Hitler Youths, WA AC s, soldiers and prisoners of war. LEST WE FORGET.
A Brief Bibliography
(not including road atlases, escape maps, pilot’s notes, lists of RAF slang, etc.)
Air Transport Auxiliary
Curtis, Lettice. The Forgotten Pilots: A Story of the Air Transport Auxiliary 1939–45. Olney, Bucks: Nelson & Saunders Ltd, 1985 (1971).
Du Cros, Rosemary. ATA Girl: Memoirs of a Wartime Ferry Pilot. London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1983.
Lussier, Betty. Intrepid Woman: Betty Lussier’s Secret War, 1942–1945. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 2010.
Whittell, Giles. Spitfire Women of World War II. London: HarperPress, 2007.
Film: Ferry Pilot. Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, 2004 (Crown Film Unit, 1941).
‘Grandma Flew Spitfires’: The Air Transport Auxiliary Exhibition and Study Centre, Maidenhead Heritage Centre, 18 Park Street, Maidenhead, Berks. http://www.atamuseum.org/
Special Operations Executive
Binney, Marcus. The Women Who Lived For Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2002.
Escott, Beryl E. Mission Improbable: A salute to the RAF women of SOE in wartime France. Sparkford, Somerset: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1991.
Helm, Sarah. A Life in Secrets: The Story of Vera Atkins and the Lost Agents of SOE. London: Abacus, 2006 (Little Brown, 2005).
SOE Secret Operations Manual. Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 1993.
Verity, Hugh. We Landed by Moonlight: Secret RAF Landings in France 1940–1944. London: Ian Allan Ltd, 1978.
Film: Now It Can Be Told. Imperial War Museum, 2007 (RAF Film Production Unit, 1946).
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
Arnold, Gwen. Radar Days: Wartime Memoir of a WAAF RDF Operator. Oxford: Isis Publishing Ltd, 2002 (Woodfield Publishing, 2000).
Escott, Beryl E. The WAAF. Shire Publications Ltd, 2001.
France during the German Occupation
Caskie, Donald. The Tartan Pimpernel. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 1999 (London: Fontana, 1960).
Knaggs, Bill. The Easy Trip: The Loss of 106 Squadron Lancaster LL 975 Pommeréval 24/25th June 1944. Perth, Scotland: Perth & Kinross Libraries, 2001.
Némirovsky, Irène. Suite Française. London: Vintage Books, 2007.
Maddie’s Mittens:
http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/13026-popup.html (From Essentials for the Forces, scanned by the Victoria and Albert Museum under ‘1940s Patterns to Knit’ at http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/13069-popup. html)
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