Hal Vaughan has been a newsman, foreign correspondent, and documentary film producer working in Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia since 1957. He served in the U.S. military in World War II and Korea and has held various posts as a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Vaughan is the author of Doctor to the Resistance: The Heroic True Story of an American Surgeon and His Family in Occupied Paris and FDR’s 12 Apostles: The Spies Who Paved the Way for the Invasion of North Africa. He lives in Paris.
“[Hal Vaughan] ably demonstrates that Chanel was far from an
innocent victim of circumstance during the second world war but a
fully fledged Abwehr (German secret service) agent with her own
number and codename: Westminster (no doubt a nod to her one-time
lover, the Duke of Westminster). . . Vaughan, who writes with
welcome economy and flair, deserves a lot of credit for finally
unraveling the strands of Chanel’s deeply deceptive
personality.”
—Tobias Grey, Financial Times
“[Sleeping with the Enemy] distinguishes itself from the many other
Chanel biographies by tackling the dicey subject of Gabrielle
Chanel’s activities during World War II . . . This is a frank and
unsentimental portrait of a figure that fashion writers are nearly
incapable of criticizing. . . While Vaughan’s discussions of
Chanel’s contributions to fashion add nothing new to the extensive
literature on her, he more than makes up for it with his impressive
research and the never-before-seen information that he has
unearthed about her wartime activities. . . . What Sleeping with
the Enemy offers is a more rounded look at a figure who has been
over-studied and under-examined.”
—Isabel Schwab, The New Republic online
“[A] compelling chronicle of Coco Chanel . . . a different Chanel
from any you’ll find at the company store . . . by no means the
account of an emerging style but a tale of how a single-minded
woman faced history, made hard choices, connived, lied,
collaborated and used every imaginable wile to survive and see that
the people she cared about survived with her .
. . Vaughan has gleaned many of the details of Chanel’s
collaboration from documents that were scattered for years
throughout European archives . . . It’s an astonishing story .
. gripping . . . provocative . . . riveting history.”
—Marie Arana, The Washington Post
“Chanel’s war years, as explored by Hal Vaughan, are as
camera-ready and as neck-deep in melodrama as Quentin Tarantino’s
“Inglourious Basterds,” and just as hard to forget now that they’re
exposed.”
—David D’Arcy, San Francisco Chronicle
"Hal Vaughan has done a stupendous job of research . . . Vaughan
draws a brilliant portrait . . a terrific and fascinating story. .
. wonderfully told, and full of great characters. . . Vaughan
brings her to life so vividly that we understand why no less a
judge than André Malraux said that "from this century in France
only three names will remain: de Gaulle, Picasso, and Chanel.". . .
It is that rarest of good reads, a biography about a famous person
with a surprise on every page. Nancy Mitford, I think, would have
loved it, and written a wonderful letter to Evelyn Waugh about
it!"
—Michael Korda, The Daily Beast
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