Secret Letters : A Battle of Britain Love Story

Using for the first time the full unpublished letters of Pilot Officer Geoffrey Myers, this book offers a fresh and distinctive insight into World War II and tells the moving story of a couple whose love was caught in the crossfire of war.

While Geoffrey Myers was a caught up in the major turning points of the early years of that war--the Battle for France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain--his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in Nazi-occupied France, desperate to escape the enemy and be reunited. While Geoffrey wrote his account of the war for his children to read if he survived, his family were in mortal danger. As a Jew, he understood only too well what would happen if the Nazis discovered his children hiding in Occupied France. For months, Geoffrey had no idea if his family were dead or alive, free or imprisoned.

These secret letters were never posted and never read by Geoffrey's family until later in the war. Contemporary personal accounts of the Battle of Britain of such frankness are extremely rare, and Geoffrey Myers' letters offer a unique perspective of the war. More than that, his letters reflect his deep love for his family and an acute anxiety for their safety, as they tried to escape the tightening net of the Nazis. Geoffrey Myers writes with eloquence and insight, and the letters are an unvarnished, sometimes brutal, portrayal of war as his Battle of Britain Squadron suffered terrible losses.

This moving story of a couple whose love was caught in the crossfire of war is a powerful and rare portrait of, not only the turbulent events of those times, but also how a family survives with so much death and danger swirling around them both.

“Review of the documentary Churchill's Few – Willis's characteristic sensitivity produces a film which praises yesterday's bravery without sparing society's embarrassment at their appearance today.” —The Times

“Review of the documentary Churchill's Few – Eerie unsettling perspective of a pacifist's analysis of the second world war…the remaining members of the famous few are revealed not as heroes but as flotsam in a sea of forgetting.” —Sunday Times