Book Launch: Robert Pike’s Silent Village: Life and Death in Occupied France about the lost lives of Oradour-sur-Glane

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A book launch of Silent Village by Robert Pike (Cardiff University) which will include a roundtable discussion between the author and Chris Millington (Manchester Metropolitan University), Megan Ison (University of Portsmouth) and Daniel Baker (Cardiff University). The event is organised by the History and Heritage research theme at the School of Modern Languages and will be hosted by Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff University).

Silent Village is a meticulously researched history of the people who lived in Oradour-sur-Glane. On 10 June 1944, in this picturesque village in the rural heart of Vichy France, 643 men, women and children were murdered in the nation’s worst wartime atrocity. Using interviews with the last remaining survivors and powerful archival material, the book is a unique insight into the traditions, loves and rivalries of a typical village in occupied France both before the tragedy and in its aftermath.

Robert Pike is an author and historian of modern France. His first work, Defying Vichy: Blood, Fear and French Resistance, was published by the History Press in 2018. He is a graduate of the University of Exeter and, after a career in teaching, is currently working towards a MSc at Cardiff University, studying the protection of Jews in the Limousin. From September 2021, he will begin doctoral research exploring the social make-up of the rural Resistance in Southern France.

Dr Chris Millington is Reader in Modern European History at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he teaches and researches on the history of modern France and Europe. His most recent monographs are France in the Second World War: Collaboration, Resistance, Holocaust, Empire (2020) and A History of Fascism in France: From the First World War to the National Front (2019), both of which were published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Megan Ison is an ESRC funded-PhD student with the South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership and is based in the Area Studies Department at the University of Portsmouth. She researches the history and memory of the Oradour Massacre and Forced Conscription in Contemporary France, with a particular interest in Alsace. She holds a BA Hons degree in French Studies from the University of Portsmouth and an MSc from the University of Southampton in Social Research Methods.

Daniel Baker is a postgraduate researcher in the School of History at Cardiff University, where he researches Violence, Emotions and the Vichy Regime in the context of his thesis on the Milice française during the German Occupation of France. He undertook undergraduate studies at the University of London Institute in Paris and holds a Master's degree in Modern History from King's College London.

Simultaneous Translation
The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Thursday 22 April to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

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