National Treasures

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What to expect

The gigantic covert wartime mission led by the men and women of London's museums and galleries to save the nation's priceless heritage.

As Hitler prepared to invade Poland during the sweltering summer of 1939, men and women from across London's museums, galleries and archives formulated ingenious plans to send the nation's highest prized objects to safety. Using stately homes, tube tunnels, slate mines, castles, prisons, stone quarries and even their own homes, a dedicated bunch of unlikely misfits packed up the nation's greatest treasures and, in a race against time, dispatched them throughout the country on a series of top-secret wartime adventures.

National Treasures highlights a moment from our history when an unlikely coalition of mild-mannered civil servants, social oddballs and metropolitan aesthetes became the front line in the heritage war against Hitler. Caroline Shenton shares the interwoven lives of ordinary people who kept calm and carried on in the most extraordinary of circumstances in their efforts to save the Nation's historic identity.

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

  • Geeks triumph over the forces of darkness: nothing could have given me greater pleasure. Combining an exciting story with scrupulous research, Caroline Shenton has done her unlikely heroes proud

    Lucy Worsley

  • An engrossing and uplifting story of how some of the greatest treasures of Britains museum, gallery and library collections were protected and preserved during the darkest days of WWII

    Richard Ovenden, author of Burning the Books

  • Shenton has the archivist’s unerring eye for detail and the storyteller’s instinct for what will make a compelling tale. It is brought to life with energy and confidence

    Julie Summers, bestselling author of Jambusters

  • Entertaining, surprising and full of brilliant vignettes, Shenton does justice to one of the great untold stories of the Second World War

    Josh Ireland, author of Churchill & Son

  • Fascinating, engaging and often eye-stretching, Caroline Shenton’s account of the battle to save the nation’s greatest treasures during wartime features a wonderfully eclectic cast of oddballs, bluestockings and endearingly eccentric aristocrats. A cracking read

    Giles Milton

  • Shenton manages to combine scholarly and diligent research with a powerful narrative drive and a hugely entertaining taste for the anecdotal. Moreover, her cast of characters wouldn’t disgrace an Ealing comedy. I haven’t enjoyed a book so much in years

    Adrian Tinniswood

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