Les Parisiennes by Anne Sebba

Noel Coward wrote in 1939 that: 'Paris is beautifully war-gay. Nobody dresses and everybody collects at Maxim's'. Life was good for the glamour- set such as Coward and Chanel who lived at the Ritz which had the best bomb shelter in Paris. Some of them refused to face reality and thought that the threat of war would just go away, while others continued to live jet-set lives and even collaborated.

Sebba has written an excellent and interesting study of how the war changed the lives of these French women and women who worked for the Resistance or helped the Jews and poor women who faced a more desperate struggle than ever. This is a must-reAd for anyone fascinated by France during the Second World War.  

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.