The Bravest Voices

‘A breathtaking story’ Daily Mail ‘Extraordinary’ The Telegraph on the Cook sisters

Desperate circumstances can cause ordinary women to achieve extraordinary things. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook two decidedly ordinary women who lived quiet lives in the London suburbs. But throughout the 1930s, the remarkable sisters rescued dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. Ida’s memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital, and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters directed every spare resource, as well as their considerable courage and ingenuity, towards saving as many as they could from Hitler’s death camps.

Author Biography

Ida Cook (1904-1986), writing as Mary Burchell, authored more than 120 books over the course of five decades. A lifelong devotee of opera, she counted Amelita Galli-Curci, Rosa Ponselle and Maria Callas among her close friends. In 1965, together with her sister Louise, she was awarded the honor or Righteous Among Nations from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Authority in Jerusalem.