Les femmes de la Résistance: l'histoire d'une famille Franco-britannique

A talk by Dr Jessica Wardhaugh, followed by a Q&A. French & English

We are marking International Women's Day with the story of a Franco-british family who chose to resist in Nazi-occupied France

June 1940. As the Nazi invaders march into Paris, Franco-British student Kathleen Woods escapes with her mother to the Loire valley, where her grandmother works as caretaker in a disused boarding house. Here, with local female resisters, she creates secret spaces of freedom to shelter a Jewish family and a grounded Scottish airman, before an extraordinary journey through France, Algeria, Morocco, Gibraltar, and Glasgow — to Kidderminster, where she lives at Manor Avenue, Bewdley Hill, and Greatfield Road.

About Dr Jessica Wardhaugh

Reader in French Studies at the University of Warwick. Jessica has published books on street politics in the 1930s, Paris and the right, and the relationship between politics and the individual in mid twentieth-century France. Her current project is on cultures of play in modern French politics, including satire, street politics, and graffiti.

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Pictures left to right:

Kathleen Woods in Kidderminster in 1942 (wearing a Free French badge) after her experiences in occupied France & North Africa; some ladies outside the 1930s boarding house that would become a focus for resistance activities (a Jewish family sheltered in the 'cave' behind the doors you can see in the background); a picture of Jeanne, Kathleen's correspondent and lifelong friend, with two members of her family;