Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced the creation of the award last year on a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
Two surviving recipients, Sir Nicholas Winton and Denis Avey, will be given their medals in person while another 25 will be recognised posthumously.
Two of these will be Ida and Louise Cook. Opera loving sisters from London who smuggled British visas to Jews while attending recitals in Europe before the war and brought their valuables back to the UK.
Ida Cook also wrote romantic fiction for Mills and Boon as Mary Burchell.
Ida Cook also wrote romantic fiction for Mills and Boon as Mary Burchell.
Harlequin Mills & Boon, who published Mary Burchell and republished her autobiography SAFE PASSAGE a couple of years ago, under her real name, say that the British Heroes of the Holocaust Awards are to take place thisafternoon at Downing Street, presented by the Prime Minister. Ida Cook will be represented by her agent, Doreen Montgomery, Joint MD of Rupert Crew Ltd.
This gives me an added reason for being proud to say I am a Mills and Boon novelist.
You can read about the other Holocaust Heroes here
8 comments:
I haven't read her autobiography yet (it's in my TBR pile), but I've loved some of her novels. I wish they were a bit easier to get hold of, but I suppose the difficulty in finding some of them at a reasonable price means that there's no risk I'll gobble down too many of them at once.
I heard about this on Radio 4 this morning but had no idea she wrote for Mills & Boon. As you say, makes you feel proud....
Oh gosh, those are real heroines. People who dared to risk their lives to help others. How fab that she wrote for M&B, too.
Make's you feel quite humble, doesn't it?
And I also never knew about the M&B connection. WOW!
xx Karen
Thank you for providing the info about Ida Cook and her sister - I had to Google her of course and found that she had been to school in my own home town!
What a small world. I have emailed the school - which still exists - to let them know.
What amazing pioneering women they must have been.
Definitely someone to admire as a role model.
thanks again, love Nina
It make you feel so humble. Caroline x
So many unknown heroes helped during WW2. What amazes me is that has taken so long to acknowledge them.
I saw this post today, amazing and like India I agree, why did it take so long?
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