Lecture with Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff) on 'From Cabaret Star to Gaullist Spy: Josephine Baker's Secret War' at Senate House, London

'From Cabaret Star to Gaullist Spy: Josephine Baker's Secret War'

RHS Lecture with Professor Hanna Diamond (Cardiff)

6.00pm BST, Friday 27 November 2026

Institute of Historical Research, Wolfson Suite

Senate House, University of London

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About this lecture

Josephine Baker, an American-born entertainer best known for her performances on the Paris stage, was one of the most unlikely contributors to France's war effort. During the Second World War, she put her celebrity, international connections, and ability to travel across borders at the service of her adopted country, working undercover to advance the Allied cause.

Drawing on new archival research, this lecture follows Baker from the Paris music hall to wartime France, North Africa, and the Middle East, showing how she converted the skills and opportunities of performance into tools of intelligence work, propaganda, and morale-building. It highlights the significance of Baker's wartime contribution both on and off the stage and assesses the role this wartime activity played in her later commemoration in France.

About the speaker

Hanna Diamond is Professor Emerita of French History at Cardiff University. A social and cultural historian of twentieth-century France, her research focuses on war, occupation, resistance, gender, and memory during and after the Second World War. Her publications include Women and the Second World War in France, 1939–1948 (Longman, 1999), Fleeing Hitler: France 1940 (OUP, 2007), and Josephine Baker's Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom (Yale University Press, 2025). Her work explores the impact of the Second World War on individuals’ everyday lives and the ways in which this conflict shaped French society, culture, and memory.

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Image Credit

Second Lieutenant Josephine Baker with Major Alla Dumesnil in Algiers, 1944. ECPAD Archive. © Unknown.

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