Oh my goodness, this young woman was beyond courageous!

Born in South Africa, Pippa Latour was to go on in her life to become an agent of the Special Operations Executive organization in England at the tender age of twenty three. This young woman and others were parachuted behind enemy lines in France to be a radio operator to spy on and report Nazi activity in and around Normandy. One can truly know the dangers of torture and death should be be found out, but Pippa seemed t possess a wonderful sense of the perils of her task as well as a photographic memory.

Pippa became part of the "Scientists" operation, with the code name, Genevieve, and because of her small stature was able to pass as a fourteen year old, selling soap from her bicycle, traveling the countryside and amassing information from the Nazi soldiers. Hidden in a hair tie shoelace, Pippa concealed the codes that were needed to operate the various radio transmitters, never knowing if people were friend or collaborators. She was stopped many times bu the Nazis and searched thoroughly but her cool nature and ability to speak French managed to allow her to escape their clutches although there was one close call.

Pippa received many awards and accolades for her heroic work but after the war she vowed never to return to France eventually moving to New Zealand. Pippa also refused to speak of her heroics and no one knew, even her four children, about what she had done during the war.

What an amazing story told to Jude Dobson when Pippa was in her late nineties! She passed away at age one hundred two, being the last (of thirty-nine) female agents in the SOE.

"Only those who will risk going too far, can possibly find how far one can go" (T.S. Eliot)

Courtesy of St. Martin's Press and Netgalley, I received the ARC of The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour and Jude Dobson. This outstanding and insightful memoir portrayed the bravery and courage exemplified by Pippa Latour when she was recruited by the SOE to parachute into Nazi occupied France. Starting with her life growing up in Africa with various family members, she learned the skills and resilience to face the challenges of surviving WWII, I was mesmerized by this remarkable woman's story, so well told! Highly recommend!

This book was about a group I had never heard of. The story of Pippa is an amazing story to be told. The courage she had at just 23 years old was truly phenomenal. I am in awe of everything she did, what she saw while living in Normandy, her hard work and dedication to the resistance is truly amazing. I have not read such a detailed accounting of any part of the history of the resistance during Hitlers reign of terror.

I would highly recommend this book, not only because of the history to be told, but to learn about a group of men and women who gave their all to help end that nasty war. Also, because this woman’s story needs to be told and told again. The strength she had in the face of a terrible enemy was something I could only ever read about, because I know I would not have volunteered for such an adventure.

I want to thank NetGalley and St Martin’s Press for this advanced reader copy. This is my honest opinion of this amazing story.

Pippa Latour didn't live long enough to see her words become a published book but at 100 years old, she was able to finally tell her harrowing story about the months spying and telegraphing her observations of Nazi movements to the Allies as a member of the SOE while living on the Normandy coastline in France just ahead of the invasion that would take place there June 1944. Disguised as a 14 year old girl selling soap to the Germans, Pippa was able to hide within plain sight and overhear things even though in reality she was a 23 year old woman. It was truly amazing that the life she had in South Africa prior to the war, afforded her skills that made it so easy for her to become a spy as she was trained to use a gun, could speak multiple languages and was used to living in a rugged environment since her family moved around quite a bit. She had even learned how to use Morse code for the fun of it, not knowing that it would be her essential tool to direct information back to England. It was as if the Fates knew this was coming and was secretly preparing her.
Her story shares the harsh living circumstances of a spy, of the losses through capture and subsequent deaths of fellow spies and the resilience of the women who sacrificed everything for the war effort. It was believed that women would make good spies as they could fly under the radar as seemingly too fragile for such difficult work and that thinking is what made them indispensable to the war effort.
Pippa was finally awarded many congratulations and thanks from the countries she served receiving medals of the highest honor. It surprised me but at the same time didn't that she never set foot on French soil again not wishing to conjure up those very harsh and troubling memories by seeing the French landscape where her life was always in danger.
A fascinating story about an unexpected but true hero of WWII written in an easy format to read and keep a reader's interest from start to finish.

There is a tremendous ring of authenticity to this brief and very human memoir of World War 2 in England and France..

I was hooked from early on, when Pippa recorded that she had never mentioned her SOE history to her then-husband because he was loose-lipped with others' sensitive information and she was sure he would never keep her much more secret information to himself. So she didn’t tell anyone including her own children until she was over 80 years old and they discovered her name on the Internet. Eventually, she had to tell them that she was part of Churchill‘s "secret army", his eyes, ears, and saboteurs in France. And before she wrote her memoir, seventy-plus years after the war ended, she had to check with the British government to ensure that the oaths she had sworn back then were now expired.

The first 20% deals with Pippa's early years in Africa, where her doctor father died in an uprising against his hospital when she was an infant, and her mother died not many years after, leaving her upbringing to a succession of aunts and godmothers. Loss was a fact of life, and so was hardship as she traveled with whichever household to distant mine sites or made the rounds of villages on medical outreach, eating what they could shoot and sleeping rough. It was all excellent preparation for her later war work.

Pippa was 18 when the war started and had no other job experience. In fact, she was in France, not quite finished her schooling, and how she got as far as England was a testament to her own hardy nature as well as the efforts of extended family and their diaspora of friends. Her first war jobs were administrative but her facility with languages and her survival skills honed during a childhood spent partly on the African savanna made her a good fit for a more active role. Her reports of the training and prep for insertion into France are a revelation

I won't summarize the bulk of the book dealing with her time in France, save that she was only the second woman to drop solo into enemy territory and was one of the last out after D-Day. But she lived with danger every moment. The life expectancy of a radio operator there was only 6 weeks after drop. Of the 430 SOE agents in France, only 39 of them were women. 14 of Pippa's co-trainees never returned. And after the war, she disappeared back into civilian life, utilizing the skills picked up in France to go unnoticed. Like other women who did sensitive war work (ie the code-breakers of Bletchley Park), she closed off that part of her life and clothed herself in the protective coloration of a conforming housewife and mother. it left me wondering how many other women didn't get around to sharing that exciting and dangerous part of their life experience with their descendants, and how many would take the 'easy way' now, if they were still around, to just hand over this book instead and say, 'She was one of us.'

All in all, this is a highly readable book that readily debunks the notion of women in the early half of the 20th century as delicate homebodies unfit for the harsh realities of wartime service..

#TheLastSecretAgent

It’s giving Call the Midwife meets James Bond—but make it real and quietly heroic.

The audiobook felt like sitting at the kitchen table with someone’s grandmother as she finally decides to tell you everything. Emotional, elegant, and unforgettable.

Pippa Latour was just 20 when she parachuted into Nazi-occupied France with nothing but a code, a cover story, and a mission that could’ve cost her life.
This audiobook is her story—finally told in full after years of silence—and it’s one of those listens that makes you stop and feel.
It’s not just about spies and war. It’s about a young woman who kept a nation’s secrets and then kept her own.
She hid radios under floorboards, smiled at Nazi soldiers while feeding intel to the Allies, and never once called herself brave.

5 stars. This story matters—and I’m so glad she finally got to tell it.

Pippa Latour's fascinating life and her time as a spy behind enemy lines in WWII France was so interesting to me and kept me turning pages late into the night. I am normally a historical fiction lover, but I am so glad to have had the chance to read about a real young woman's experience as a spy in Nazi controlled France.

Pippa's nomadic growing up years after her parents died comprised of time as an orphan with her aunts and uncles, and various godmothers, and adopted grandfathers in South Africa and Paris, and finally as a young adult in London. She considered herself lucky that the adults in her life loved her and taught her many things. Her first aunt and uncle kept her parents memories alive, and her uncle taught her morse code and how to shoot. She loved her time in South Africa from the Belgian Congo to Kenya, to the wide open Serengeti plains. She was fluent in Swahili, Dutch, German, French, and English.

It was in London that she was tapped for special training at various manor homes to learn various skills to be a spy behind enemy lines. She was accepted as a secret agent with the SOE (Special Operations Executive). "SOE had Churchill as its ally; 'Churchill's Secret Army' not only survived, but thrived, throughout World War II." "I trusted very few people. That became ingrained in me in my early twenties as a survival instinct."

I found Pippa's story fascinating and enlightening. Her nomadic lifestyle growing up, the many languages she spoke, and knowing morse code all added in her favor of becoming a spy. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves to read memoirs, WWII history, and spy stories.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Net Galley for allowing me to read an early copy. All opinions are my own.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Pippa Latour's personal history as a SOE agent. I LOVE getting to learn more about field operatives during WWII--especially women! The admiration I have for all the women I read memoirs from who held these roles are truly awe-inspiring.

Pippa Latour spent her early years in the Belgian Congo, where she rapidly picked up several languages, learned how to shoot a gun, and took classes to learn morse. All of this really set her up well for where she'd find herself in her early 20s--a British spy working in Nazi France, operating a Type 3 Mk. II or Mk XV (I presume). As she enters her role in 1944, Pippa is in her early 20s. However, she's to go undercover as a 14-year old school girl living with her grandparents and selling soaps. She has some ingenious ideas in the field--from where she stores her codes in a shoelace to where she hides the crystal for her machine--I was wholly impressed.

She was one of very few to make it back home after the war's conclusion and signed a NDA. She never spoke of her experiences after the war, until now. Her children eventually asked her in the early 2000s about her experiences after reading about her somewhere else. They had no idea! When she decided to share her story, she wanted it done her way. This memoir was written entirely by Pippa (with some assistance from journalist Jude Dobson) and published posthumously.

Highly recommend to all my friends and followers!! This is one you surely won't regret. Thanks to NetGalley and MacMillian audio for the ARC of this book!

Excellent memoir of the life of Pippa Latour, the last SOE secret agent in Nazi occupied France. She was a courageous woman who led a fascinating life, both before and after her time in France.

So many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this!

This is an incredible story. This is non-fiction but it seems too crazy to have happened! This was a page-turner. Pippa Latour is an unbelievable human. I do hope everyone interested in WWII and feats of important bravery get a chance to read this. It makes most lives quite boring by comparison! This is a story for the ages. And for all ages. We cannot forget the heroic actions that were part of the world-saving efforts to defeat the Nazi's.

Pippa Latour lived to a ripe old age, dying while this book was in the publishing pipeline. She had kept silent for well over half a century, stating that she'd signed a NDA, but also I suspect from the lingering effects of the PTSD she suffered after the fact.

It wasn't until she saw some incorrect facts float about that prompted her to come forward; she hadn't even told her kids about her experiences.

The writing was clear and brought out her voice with vividness and clarity, glimmering now and then with wry humor. But that didn't mask the grimness of her experiences. Those were rough, and the fallout was rough--the cruelty to the helpless, such as animals, perpetrated by the oppressed as well as the oppressors, and the sometimes revolting extremes people went to to get food, never enough.

Her early years were so amazing that I was enthralled far before the war happened. The story illustrates with frank clarity the courage it took for this woman (and the women she knew, most of whom didn't make it out) to live covertly, sending messages while continuously hunted by the Gestapo.

This book felt like sitting with your grandma on her floral couch drinking tea while she tells you about her life. Very good read.

Thank you to netgallry and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. I alternated between ebook and audio and enjoyed learning about this historical figure.

I love learning about history but this author was too long winded for my taste. It felt like I was taken round and round just to reach a single point that could have been explained in three sentences. I started skimming pages and realized I wasn't missing anything. I wish this author luck and I hope their story reaches the right readers but sadly, I wasn't one of them.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the chance to read this early in exchange of an honest review.

This is quite an amazing tale about an amazing woman. The bravery of people, especially women, in WWII is just staggering and this is quite the tale. From an unconventional upbringing in Africa to worn torn France, Pippa leads an astounding life. Written as a memoir she was the last of the SOE women operating in France leading up to D Day, as covert wireless operators. Just in her 20s she stands out early in her training for her quick learning and cool head. This really is an amazing tale.

Amazing story of the life of the last surviving SOE agent. Extremely well written and well paced. I have read many books about agents working behind enemy lines during WWII, and each contributes to my understanding and appreciation of this period because each one had unique experiences. However, many are hard to read because they bog down in deep background, or go into long tangents, or sometimes they have long passages of untranslated French dialogue.. this book tells the story with just the right balance of detail to be interesting and informative, and still keekeeps the narrative moving. Sometimes people’s back story is important, and necessary , but not incredibly entertaining, but I was totally absorbed in Pipa’s story long before she became an agent.

Someone needs to make an action movie about this strong, courageous, and yet humble hero who definitely deserves the title of “survivor.”

Many thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for allowing me to read The Last Secret Agent. The story of Pippa LaTour is incredible. She was strong, smart and incredibly brave. Reading about her life in her own words is just awesome. This is a must read for everyone with any interest in incredible women.

This book, a memoir of the last surviving SOE female agent operating in occupied France during World War II, stands apart from many other titles on the subject. Her story is remarkable: she was only 22 when she was sent to France, her tenure doing radio transmissions from occupied territory was much longer than typically, she never told anybody what she did during the war, not even to her family. Her children accidentally found her name on the Internet when she was in her 80s! Now, that she shared the hard unvarnished truth about her war-time experiences, it adds to our understanding of the cruelty of war and the constant stress and fear these women, girls really, had to bear doing their heroic work. In some other books about women in Resistance, they show that there was some semblance of normal life for them. In Pippa's case, there was little of that: she had operated mostly alone, slept in the woods, scavenged for food, endured rape, interrogations, and a two-month long walk through France when her mission ended. Her measured, no-nonsense delivery amplifies the impact of her story. Pippa didn't live to see the publication of her book, but as her co-author said, it was her "last public service, her last contribution to freedom". This book could not be timelier. It should be read now.

Told in first-person narrative by Pippa herself, the last surviving agent from Britain for SOE F Section. She recounts all of her long life from her nomadic/peripatetic childhood and onward for most of her work in France. She says that she just never talked about it with husband or children, and not even with colleagues until the last twenty years. In spite of everything she endured back then, she made it out and ended up in New Zealand. Before she died in 2023 at age 102, she told her story to Jude Dobson, the co-author, to give voice to history and her part in it. It is fascinating and eye opening. I recommend it and the perspective it brings to everyone.
I requested and received a temporary uncorrected digital galley from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley.
#TheLastSecretAgent by Pippa Latour with @jude_dobson #SpyBehindNaziLines @stmartinspress
#memoir #biography #undergroundagent #WW2 #intelligenceservice

Including a fascinating backdrop of growing up in early twentieth century Africa, this is an incredible story of a woman SOE Special Operations Executive (SOE) wireless operator deployed to France. Her adventures behind the lines gathering and relaying intel continued up to and after D-Day.

There is a very present danger that results in the deaths of multiple of her peers which she accepted with an alacrity that I do not know if we can relate to today:

We all knew that the remaining life expectancy of a male wireless operator who entered occupied France was just six weeks, and on more than one occasion had it explained to us that the chances of us coming back were 50/ 50. It is a wonder that any of us actually agreed to the job—I am not sure people would do so today, but you have to understand that wartime is very different. We were all doing our bit, fighting for what we believed in, pushing back against a cruel and expansionist enemy.


This is also a tale of a woman's journey into and out of a largely male preserve:

The instruction to use women came from Churchill himself, with Selwyn Jepson, the recruiting officer for the French section of SOE, agreeing with him. After the war Jepson was quoted as saying: “In my view, women were very much better than men for the work . Women . . . have a greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.”