My Father's House: AS SEEN ON BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS (The Rome Escape Line, 1)

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Four thousand frightened prisoners crammed like abused beasts, half starved, into a couple of barbed-wired stony fields. Written in O´Connor´s usual lyrical,perfect prose,it´s moving,thought provoking and full of perfectly rounded characters,most of which you´d like as friends. We learn of how Hugh O’Flaherty upsets both the Vatican, by his open dissent against the agreed neutrality, and that of his nemesis, Obersturmbannfuhrer, Paul Hauptmann. At the end of this story the author tells us that real people and real events inspired this work of fiction. It alternated between the days in 1943 that led up to the Rendimento and then in 1963 when several members of The Choir were interviewed.

I’d never heard of ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican’ before and was curious as to how he hid and protected so many from the Nazis. The story in ‘My father’s house’ is always building to Christmas Eve, 1943, when a mission (code name Rendimento) takes place. There are also brilliant little details about life in neutral Vatican City such as the fact it was necessary for residents to apply for a haircut pass the leave its boundaries. It’s an incredibly dangerous but tightly-run clandestine operation, and O’Flaherty remains frustratingly out of Hauptmann's grasp. The Vatican City was supposed to be neutral, but during WWII, it was a place where Allied troops and Jews were smuggled.He put his life at risk using his creative tactics against the Nazis, to help Jews and escaped allied prisoners to flee.

The mission is to smuggle Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy to safety - all this under the ever watchful eyes of the Nazis, and one Nazi in particular, Obersturmbannfurher Paul Hauptmann.

Vatican City was supposedly neutral but during WWII plans were put in place where Jews and allied troops were smuggled to safety. I tried taking this one in smaller bites and just reading a few pages a night, but it didn't work for me. O Flaherty’s anti-Nazi stance earns him the ire of his superiors at The Vatican, which pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, but does not deter his efforts in doing as much he could for those in need of his help.