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Books > History > General
The inspirational story of the ordinary people who forged the
documents that saved thousands of Jewish lives in World War Two.
'Powerful ... gripping ... inspiring' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY Between
1940 and 1943, a small group of Polish diplomats and Jewish
activists in Switzerland engaged in a wholly remarkable - and until
now, almost completely unknown - humanitarian operation. Under the
leadership of the Polish Ambassador, Aleksander Lados, they
undertook a systematic programme of forging identity documents for
Latin American countries, which were then smuggled into
German-occupied Europe to save the lives of thousands of Jews
facing extermination in the Holocaust. The Lados operation was one
of the largest rescue missions of the entire war, and The Forgers
tells this extraordinary story for the first time. We follow the
desperate bids of Jews to obtain these life-saving documents, and
their painful uncertainty over whether they will be granted
protection from the Nazis' murderous fury. And we witness the quiet
heroism of those who decided to act in an attempt to save thousands
of lives. 'As gripping as it is moving' JULIA BOYD, author of
Travellers in the Third Reich 'Original and thought-provoking'
RICHARD OVERY, author of Blood and Ruins 'Astonishing' KATJA HOYER,
author of Beyond the Wall
*Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize* In late
eighteenth-century London, a group of extraordinary people gathered
around a dining table once a week. The host was Joseph Johnson,
publisher and bookseller and he was joined at dinner by a shifting
constellation of great minds including William Blake, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Henry Fuseli, Anna Barbauld and Mary
Wollstonecraft. Johnson's years as a maker of books saw profound
change in Britain and abroad. In this remarkable portrait of a
revolutionary age, Daisy Hay captures a changing nation through the
stories of the men and women who wrote it into being, and whose
ideas still influence us today. 'Rich in period and personal
detail' Guardian 'Hugely engrossing' Sunday Times
Our Flag Was Still There details the improbable two-hundred-year
journey of the original Star-Spangled Banner—from Fort McHenry in
1814, when Francis Scott Key first saw it, to the Smithsonian in
2023—and the enduring family who defended, kept, hid, and
ultimately donated the most famous flag in American history.
Francis Scott Key saw the original Star-Spangled Banner flying over
Baltimore’s Fort McHenry on September 14, 1814, following a
twenty-five-hour bombardment by the British Navy, inspiring him to
write the words to our national anthem. Torn and tattered over the
years, reduced in size to appease souvenir-hunters, stuffed away in
a New York City vault for the last two decades of the nineteenth
century, the flag’s mere existence after two hundred years is an
improbable story of dedication, perseverance, patriotism, angst,
inner-family squabbles, and, yes, more than a little luck. For this
unlikely feat, we have the Armistead family to thank—led by
Lieutenant Colonel George Armistead, commander of Fort McHenry, who
took it home after the battle in clear defiance of U.S. Army
regulations. It is only because of that quiet indiscretion that the
flag survives to this day. Armistead’s descendants kept and
protected their family heirloom for ninety years. The flag’s
first photo was not taken until 1873, almost sixty years after Key
saw it waving, and most Americans did not even know of its
existence until Armistead’s grandson loaned it to the Smithsonian
in 1907. Tom McMillan tells a story as no one has before. Digging
deep into the archives of Fort McHenry and the Smithsonian,
accessing never-before-published letters and documents, and
presenting rare photos from the private collections of Armistead
descendants and other sources, McMillan follows the flag on an
often-perilous journey through three centuries. Our Flag Was Still
There provides new insight into an intriguing period of U.S.
history, offering a “story behind the story” account of one of
the country’s most treasured relics.
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