James Lander author of The Mother Who Defied the Reich

Jim Lander is a Watchet based local author. In his past life Jim was a history teacher, and he has previously published a book about Lincoln & Darwin – Shared Visions of Race, Science and Religion.

His new book,  The Mother Who Defied the Reich – The untold story of one family’s resistance in Occupied France, is being published by The University Press of Kansas early next year.

This is the true story of Henriette de Bosmelet, the widowed matriarch of the Château de Bosmelet in Normandy. In 1940 the Germans invaded France and decided to billet troops in the Chateau. Henriette negotiated that she could stay in the chateau, but her son Pierre was serving as an officer in the retreating French Army and he and his wife Diana fled with her two young children eventually to America. Diana had been born in London to a wealthy Jewish family, and Henriette herself had numerous Jewish friends among the elite families of Paris.

Pierre returned to Europe to serve in de Gaulle’s headquarters in London and later to fight the Germans in West Africa as well as in France. Henriette tried to protect her property during the three years of German occupation but was also concerned about the fate of her Jewish friends in Paris. She was imprisoned for ‘her insolence’  and when the Germans finally expelled her from the Château in October 1943, she did not know that this was because they were secretly building a V-1 ‘flying bomb’ (or ‘doodlebug’) launch site on her property.

The family suffered tragedy and loss but were able to keep some contact over the next few years. They were reunited months after France’s liberation. Healing her broken family and restoring the war ruined Chateau became Henrietta’s intertwined and daunting tasks in post war France

Reviews reference the depth of research which combines a true family saga of an aristocratic French family, the history of the German occupation of France, the persecution of Jews, weapons of reprisal and the battle in Normandy. The book brings history to vivid life.