A British historian, using new-found source material, tells for the first time the full story of a pivotal episode in World War II. On Christmas Ever, 1942, 21-year-old Fernand Bonnier fired two shots into the stomach of Jean-Francois Darlan, the Vichy leader in North Africa. Two hours later Admiral Darlan died. The assassin was shot after a court-martial in Algiers. Behind this assissination was a complex and tangled story which Anthony Verrier has tried to unravel using British and American secret service papers and interviews with informed British and French respondents to compensate for the lack of officially available documents.