A jewel for the Festilitt line-up, historian Hanna Diamond, a professor of French history at Cardiff University, will join us to discuss her recent book, Josephine Baker’s Secret War.
A stage and screen legend, Josephine Baker’s career as an actress smashed many of the racial stereotypes that dogged the profession in the early years of cinema and cabaret. In her extensively researched biography, Hanna Diamond uncovers the story of Baker’s participation in European intelligence gathering during WWII.
Diamond reveals how Baker was recruited by French operatives in 1939, under handler Jacques Abtey. Skeptical at first, Abtey soon recognized how Baker’s fame gave her entrée into elite circles across Europe and North Africa, allowing her to gather and pass coded intelligence via invisible ink, notes hidden in her costumes, or even her sheet music. Her celebrity status got her a back-stage pass into the theatre of war that few others during that era were granted.
Well documented, well written and masterfully well presented, Hanna Diamond weaves a new strand into the multi-threaded tapestry that makes up Josephine Baker’s life and her legacy.