No Way Out: The Irish in Wartime France 1939-1945 - review

This book is about the plight of Irish personages great and small who found themselves in France during the Second World War. The famous included James Joyce and his family, Samuel Beckett and Elaine Gray. The not-so-famous included nuns, housewives, au pairs turned members of the French Resistance, priests and would-be playboys.

The central character was Gerald O’Kelly, who combined his wine business with that of “special counsellor” to the Irish diplomatic mission to France doling out passports to the Irish and to those who could prove Irish extraction. The author relates that an Irish passport in France during the war was so valuable that it meant the difference between imprisonment and freedom. Irish-born holders of British passports were being interned as enemy aliens.

Joyce did, indeed, join the scramble for Irish passports, not for himself, but for his children. Judging from the text, not to mention the bibliography, the author has done very extensive research to retrace the steps of obscure Irish men and women during a dark time.