Quotes from Anne Sebba

The reason why I believe Ethel's story is as important today as ever is to realize what can happen when fear, a forceful and blunt weapon in the hands of authority, turns to hysteria and justice is willfully ignored.

As the historian David Bellos has concluded: 'About one third of all Jews resident in France were deported and murdered … but only one Jewish child in ten perished in the years of German occupation and that was very largely because of the courage and skill of people like Hélène Berr and the kindness and generosity of a vast network of French well-wishers who took Jewish children and hid them.' Notwithstanding, 11,400 French children died.

Even the arch-British diplomat Harold Nicolson joined in, insisting it was not that the Europeans 'were anti-American, just that they were frightened that the destinies of the world should be in the hands of a giant with the limbs of an undergraduate, the emotions of a spinster and the brain of a pea hen'.

It's not a gift, but restitution, not charity but justice,' she wrote.

On 27 October 1946 the French constitution was finally changed to include among the basic principles of the Republic the law 'guaranteeing women equal rights to those of men in all spheres', and the national elections a month later in November were the first in which women in France were able to participate.