The Ghost of Munich

On September 29th 1938 the fate of a country was sealed at Munich. Hitler, Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain and the President of France, Edouard Daladier negotiated the handover to Germany of the Sudetenlands, and with it came the betrayal of a nation by the great European powers. Chamberlain claimed 'Peace with honour'. Daladier returned to Paris a hero, the man who saved France from another disastrous war with Germany. Yet he knew he had failed. 'I had been knocked out of the ring,' he says in this extraordinary novel, based upon detailed historical research. Scene by scene, hour by hour the reader accompanies Daladier from his departure to Munich to his triumphant but ultimately tragic return to Paris. In Germany we sit with him and the other leaders at the conference table, and as the tensions of the fateful day build up, the political twists and turns and the personal animosities intensify. History made Daladier the Ghost of Munich, the forgotten dupe, the fool cast to oblivion for his role in a thirteen hour blackmail. This is his story. The Ghost of Munich has the sharpness of film, the drama of tragedy and the truth of history.