Her hope for one depends on her belief in the other.īut Levade is Jewish, and Julien half Jewish. Her increasingly forlorn hope that Peter Gregory ha s survived becomes equated in her mind with a desire to keep alive the spirit of France as she has known it – exemplified by the Resistance. Charlotte keeps her true identity – and her true self – hidden from Julien. Levade’s son, Julien, is an architec t and also leader of the local R esistance group. His long conversations with the much younger Charlotte about art, love and death form the thematic heart of the book. As a cover, she takes a job working as a maid for an elderly painter called Levade, a former libertine, now a thoughtful and religious man. When Gregory goes missing over France, Charlotte persuades herself that she can combine her proposed work for G Section with an unofficial search for her lover, and she is dropped by parachute over central western France, ending up in a village called Lavaurette. Her command of French and her apparent self-discipline lead her to be recruited by ‘G’ Section, an undercover organisation that is based on the real-life Special Operations Executive (SOE). While working as a doctor’s assistant, Charlotte meets and falls in love with an English RAF pilot, Peter Gregory, whose carefree approach to life and death contrasts with her own deeply considered attitudes. She is a highly principled, somewhat reserved character and is not immediately at home in the rackety life of the war-time capital.

In her early twenties, she leaves Scotland to come to London, where she wants to help the Allied war effort. Charlotte Gray is the daughter of Captain Gray, Stephen Wraysford’s commanding officer in Birdsong.

Charlotte gray novel