Sponsored by the poet Pablo Neruda to flee the violence of the Spanish Civil War, a pregnant widow and an army doctor unite in an arranged marriage only to be swept up by the early days of World War II.

Summer 1979. The Strelzyk and Wetzel families flee East Germany in a self-made hot-air balloon, but crash-land just before the West German border. The Stasi finds traces of the attempted escape and launch an investigation, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. As the Stasi get closer and closer each day, a nerve-racking battle against the clock begins.

A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days
When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces...