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In June 1948, a former RAF-trained pilot named Henri Déricourt stood trial in Paris on a charge that could have cost him his life: intelligence with the enemy. During the Second World War, Déricourt had served as air movements officer for the Special Operations Executive’s French Section — the man responsible for finding clandestine landing strips and flying British agents in and out of occupied France under the noses of the Germans. Over seventeen months he organised seventeen landings, and moved more than a hundred agents in both directions.
But in the summer of 1943, SOE’s largest network in France — codenamed Prosper — collapsed catastrophically. Around 180 agents and French helpers were arrested; roughly 80 never came home. Suspicion soon fell on Déricourt himself. After the war, captured German intelligence officers testified that “Gilbert” — his SOE codename — had been photographing agents’ documents and correspondence and passing them to the Gestapo’s Paris chief, Karl Boemelburg, under the agent number BOE/48.
By the time Déricourt faced trial, the case against him should have been damning. Instead, it collapsed: key witnesses were dead or had recanted, no one from SOE appeared to testify against him, and — most extraordinarily — his own former SOE superior took the stand in his defence, claiming Déricourt’s German contacts had been sanctioned all along. He was acquitted within minutes.
Was Déricourt a traitor who betrayed dozens of agents to their deaths — or, as some have since argued, a double agent run by British intelligence, deliberately feeding the Germans false information to protect the real invasion plans for D-Day? It’s a question that has divided historians for eighty years, and one that gives Stuart Outred’s book, Hand of Albion, its title.
Join us in October as Stuart takes us inside the trial itself — the witnesses, the missing evidence, and the verdict that still divides opinion today — and asks who Henri Déricourt really was working for.
Stuart Outred is a former soldier and detective, now an independent historian specialising in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the French Resistance during the Second World War. His research focuses on the individual agents and operatives behind SOE’s clandestine work, and he is the author of a previous book on SOE agent Violette Szabo, which he presented at the Special Forces Club and received positive about from acknowledged SOE authors.
His latest book, Hand of Albion: The Trial of Henri Dericourt – Air Operations Officer F-Section, Special Operations Executive, examines the controversial case of Henri Dericourt, F-Section’s air movements officer, and the questions that have surrounded his loyalty ever since. Painstakingly translating many documents, including statements taken by the DST during their investigation into Déricourt, which have only recently been released by the French Military Archives, Stuart has used his investigative skills to cross-examine these documents, which have revealed the shocking way in which the trial of Dericourt failed.
Stuart joins us in October to talk about the book and the trial at its heart.
This event is free to attend with a standard museum entry ticket but you must reserve your seats as capacity is limited.
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