Bad Faith

In the 1960s, Carmen Callil visited a psychiatrist called Anne Darquier; they forged a close bond, which was broken when Anne committed suicide. Years later Carmen discovered that Anne’s father was the French war criminal, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix. Louis Darquier was a French Nazi, a collaborator and a con man. He married a failed, alcoholic Australian actress, Myrtle Jones, and Anne, their only child, was abandoned to a nurse at birth. She was raised in poverty in Oxfordshire.

Their extraordinary story – and that of Louis Darquier’s ascent to power before and during the Second World War – is the key to a revelatory account of the terrible acts of the Vichy government during the war years. Louis Darquier – always broke, always desperate for attention, social cachet, women and drink – became the longest serving Commissioner for Jewish Affairs in theVichy government. Over seventy thousand French Jews died in Auschwitz, most were sent to death during his tenure. He was never brought to justice, having fled to Madrid where he lived out the rest of his life.