June of this year sees the 80th anniversary of the French resistance rising that saw the creation of a Free Republic in the massif that lies just south east of Grenoble. The upshot was Nazi Germany’s largest anti-partisan operation in Western Europe, the collapse of the rising, and the deaths of around 600 maquisards and 200 civilians. Weeks later the plateau was liberated by the Allied forces landed on the Riviera, the southern counterpart of the Normandy D-Day operation. Jim Ring unravels the devotion, heroism, barbarity, vainglory and political chicanery that brought about one of the most heart-rending episodes of France during the Occupation.

Please join us for this entertaining and informative talk by the successful author and film-maker Jim Ring, whose bibliography includes a biography of Erskine Childers (1996, winner of the Marsh Prize), How the English Made the Alps (2000), We Come Unseen (2001, winner of the Mountbatten Prize), Riviera (2004), Storming the Eagle’s Nest (2013), How the Navy Won the War: The Real Instrument of Victory. 1914-1918 (2018, – shortlisted for the Mountbatten), all richly researched, deftly written and highly praised books at the intersection of history and geography. Jim, who read English at Oxford before going into advertising, is a director of the literary quarterly Slightly Foxed, and a director of the North Norfolk literary festival.. His recent novels are Interregnum and …with Mrs Tugendhat to the Undiscovered Country.

The talk will be followed by drinks.

Please email mailto:kate.roberts@bnc.ox.ac.uk or mailto:carole.bourne-taylor@bnc.ox.ac.uk if you would like to attend

[Registration for Brasenose people on forms.office.com/e/vw2y3yFrU3 (BNC staff and students)]