Jerrard Tickell – författare

"What a treasure! What a find! Like an especiallybeautiful time-travel device, Appointment with Venus took me back to theChannel Islands during World War II, where I revelled in every character (eventhe bovine ones) and every twist of fate that befell them." Annie Barrows,co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“Appointment with Venus is one of best books writtento show what might have happened if Britain had been occupied, as much for whatis glossed over and romanticised as included. I strongly recommend a read.”Anne Sebba, New York Times bestselling biographer and author of TheWomen’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, Les Parisiennes and EthelRosenberg.It is 1940. The world is at war and all that stands betweenEngland and Nazi-occupied Europe is the tiny (fictitious) Channel Island ofArmorel, controlled by the Nazis but still home to loyal villagers, a pacifistpainter  … and a pedigree Guernsey cownamed Venus. This hugely entertaining wartime classic, published in abeautiful gift hardback edition, is introduced by Rosa Rankin-Gee, author ofthe debut novel The Last Kings of Sark and the bestselling Dreamland(currently in adaptation as a 6-part TV series for the BBC)

'I am a very ordinary woman to whom a chance was given to see human beings at their best and at their worst... I completely believe in the potential nobility of the human spirit.'During some of the darkest days of the Second World War, a young Frenchwoman living as a mother and housewife in England left her ordinary life to become a British agent, working covertly in France to aid the Resistance. Entering a murky and deadly world of espionage and double-dealing, she was betrayed to the Germans, only to endure torture by the Gestapo and the hell of the infamous concentration camp of Ravensbruck. Yet she retained a compassion, grace and spiritedness that mystified her captors; and, living to see the liberation of Europe, she kept, in the direst circumstances, her fundamental trust in goodness. ODETTE tells the moving and inspirational story of a woman, who, in her courage and her ability to hold on to hope, was far from ordinary.