Short listed for the Whitbread Biography Award. A compelling biography of the extraordinary lives of William and Margaret Joyce. William Joyce - Lord Haw Haw - was hanged as a traitor in Wandsworth Prison in September 1945, the last man to be executed in this country under the Treason Act of 1695. Haw Haw tells of the Joyce's pro-Nazi broadcasting during the Second World War, explores the complexities of their tempestuous marriage and examines previously unpublished material including recently declassified Secret Service files. Absolutely fascinating.
Haw-Haw : The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce Synopsis
William and Margaret Joyce – Lord and Lady Haw-Haw – became one of the most mythologized, feared and ridiculed partnerships of the Second World War. His ‘Germany Calling’ broadcasts delivered in an upper-class drawl, and her more feminine, though no less insidious, pro-Nazi wireless talks, were part of the very fabric of the Home Front.
Yet when they were captured in May 1945, only he was charged with high treason – a fact even more surprising when it became apparent that, unlike Margaret, William was not a British subject . . . Authorized by William Joyce’s daughter, Heather, and based on new interviews and previously unpublished archives, including letters, diaries and recently declassified Secret Service files, Haw-Haw is a meticulously researched and vividly written biography. In tracing William and Margaret’s relationship from the rise of the fascist movement in the East End of London to the streets of war-torn Berlin, Nigel Farndale has written a compelling, evocative, and sometimes shocking study of two people whose passions overrode everything. This is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary marriage.
Nigel Farndale is a columnist and feature writer for the Sunday Telegraph and has won a British Press Award for his interviews. He lives in London. This is his fourth book.
