A foreign field

Early in the First World War, four British soldiers were cut off behind German lines in northern France. Villagers in Villeret, a small community on the Western Front, chose to hide them and kept them concealed until they could be taken for local Picard farmhands. Ben Macintyre follows these men, the families who sheltered them, and the lives they built under occupation. Among them is Private Robert Digby, whose romance with Claire Dessenne, the village's most admired young woman, becomes central to the story. Their relationship produced a child who came to be called the Englishman's Daughter, and the consequences of that child's birth, including a betrayal, shaped the village for generations.

Drawing on the recollections of villagers and the final letters written by the soldiers, Macintyre reconstructs daily existence behind enemy lines during the Great War, from the fear of discovery to the small compromises needed to survive. He also sets out a proposed answer to a puzzle that still surrounds these events and continues to be discussed in Villeret today.

Macintyre, a journalist, later became known for narrative nonfiction about wartime deception and espionage, and he brings a similar reporter's attention to detail to this account of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.