A Train in Winter

A boom which contains a wealth of historical information as well as some brilliant if horrific storytelling

John Laughland, Spectator

Compassionate, meticulous and compulsively enthralling... This book is essential reading. The litany of names at the end, with their brief biographies (Yolande, Cecile, Poupette, Mitzy, Lucie...) reminds us weeping is not enough. It bears witness - and warns

Bel Mooney, Daily Mail

A multiple biography and a detailed anatomy of the nature of friendship... A Train in Winter is a powerful and moving book; its significance is in bringing to a wider, non-French readership the particular and terrible fate of a group of women whose only crime was to love their country and to wish to do something to defend it, at a time when its government chose craven obedience to the occupier, with terrible consequences for so many of its people

Natasha Lehrer, Times Literary Supplement

A pitch-perfect study of human depravity, and of the heroism it can inspire

Maggie Fergusson, Intelligent Life

This is a clear-sighted, distressing and unforgettable book

Stephanie Cross, The Lady

It is an exceptional achievement on the author's part to have reconstructed these obscure lives that so often ended in sordid misery and to have restored their dignity and honour

Patrick Marnham, Literary Review

An outstanding and important book, compelling and deeply troubling

Peter Eade, Country Life

This serious and heartfelt book does deliver on its promise of a tale of how female friendship "can make the difference between living and dying"... Profound

Brian Schofield, Sunday Times

Moorehead tells her appalling story in measured prose that sets off perfectly the reader's growing sense of wonder that such heroism is possible

Guardian

A hybrid of history and multiple biography, movingly chronicles the women's ordeal... [it] bears eloquent witness to the moral and material ruin of collaborationist in France

Ian Thomson, Seven

A harrowing but also uplifting shared story of friendship, courage and endurance

Independent

A story of stunning courage, generosity and hope. They risked their lives to defeat Fascism, by printing subversive literature, hiding Jewish friends or, in the case of one girl, simply insulting a French youth because he had decided to co-operate with the Nazis. The price they paid for their bravery was terrible. A Train in Winter could have been a sad, almost morbid book. In Moorehead's expert hands it is a triumphant one

Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday

A remarkable and deeply affecting book

Oxford Times

A remarkable achievement of biographical and oral research and with a brilliant narrative and description

History Today

A harrowing but also uplifting story of shared story of friendship, courage and endurance

Boyd Tonkin, Independent, Books of the Year

A hugely important book documenting female suffering during WWII and the solidarity that help some of them survive in the most brutal conditions

Week