Spies, crashed airmen and fugitives from the Gestapo often relied on forged papers during the war on the French Riviera. If you were British, like the people in this documentary film, papers were essential to avoid arrest. You were not supposed to be there after 1940.
From Nice and Monaco to Clermont Ferrand, this film traces the stories of five Britons who by fate, choice or duty, spent the war years in southern France evading the authorities. Despite the Riviera's deceptive luxuriousness, Gerald Hakim ended up in solitary confinement; Dorothy Cham aide's husband was arrested by the anti-Semitic authorities; Taffy Higginson was imprisoned above Monte Carlo and Lady Henderson was sent to the horrors of Ravensbrück. Narrator Michael Bryant
photographyMIKE SOUTHON
Written and produced by DAVID PEARSON