Resistance

In the summer of 1940, as the German Occupation tightened its grip on Paris, Agnes Humbert helped to establish one of the first resistance cells. Within a year the group was publishing a news bulletin, helping allied airmen escape and passing military information back to London. Then came the catastrophe of betrayal, followed by arrest and interrogation, imprisonment and trial and, for Agnes, deportation to slave labour camp in Germany. Resistance is the secret journal of a woman who never gave up hope.

Author Biography

Agnes Humbert was born in 1896 in Dieppe, and married the artist Georges Sabbagh in 1916. They had two sons. Agnes continued her studies in art history, but they were divorced in 1934. In 1936 she published an influential book Louis David: peintre et conventionnel, which made her reputation as an art historian. The following year she was recruited to the staff of the newly created Musee National des Arts et Traditions Populaires, a sister institution to the Musee de l’Homme. After the war she refused on principle to return to the post from which she had been sacked, but continued to write books on art until her death in 1963. Barbara Mellor is a translator specialising in the fine and decorative arts, art history, architectural history, fashion and design. Her most recent projects include The House of Dior and The Society Portrait (both Thames & Hudson), and a series of exhibition catalogues for individual contemporary artists. She now divides her time between the Scottish Borders and the Aveyron.