Honouring a real Mills & Boon heroine

Britons who helped save Jews and other persecuted groups during the Second World War will be honoured at Downing Street with the new ''Hero of the Holocaust'' medal.

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.

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