Patrick Marnham is a biographer and travel writer. He began his career as a reporter on Private Eye and has written for many newspapers including The Times, the Guardian, The New York Review of Books and Libération and has been literary editor of the Spectator and the first Paris correspondent of the Independent. His books have won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Prize and the Marsh Biography Award and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lived in Paris for twelve years and now lives in Oxfordshire.

• IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionThe LegendCaluireInto the PantheonPart I: Life1. A Republican Cradle, 1789–18992. Growth of a Senior Civil Servant, 1899–19193. A Secret Man, a Complex Man, 1919–19344. Moulin Rouge, 1934–1939Part II: War5. The Prefect of Chartres, 1939–19406. Zones, 1940–19417. Life on Half-Pay, 1940–19418. An Envoy to London, 1941Part III: Death9. Life Underground, 1942–194310. Vive la Nuit! November 1942–June 194311. An Urn and a Pot of Jam, June–July 1943Part IV: Resurrection12. The machinery of Insurrection, 1943–194413. Murdering History, 1945–194914. The Doctor’s Waiting Room, 21 June 1943PostscriptPostscript to the New EditionGlossaryChronologyNotesSelect BibliographyIndex

Secret agents do not leave reliable accounts of their activities, nor do doubleand triple-agents act from simple motives. The lucidity comes, like the solution of a good detective story, towards the end of a tangled tale full of unusual suspects.