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Abstract

Nathalie Sergueiew travelled across Europe and the Middle East on foot and by bicycle between 1933 and 1939. She was a journalist, solo traveller, cyclist, painter and spy during the Second World War. She made three major journeys. At the age of 21, she set off on foot to Poland via Germany. The following year she cycled through Central Europe. During her travels, she took an interest in political and social life. The situation in Europe is tense and she seeks to understand and explain. She conducted investigations in labour camps and slums, interviewed politicians and talked to Nazi activists, communists and farmers. Curious and determined, she integrates herself into the population, staying with local people and refusing no experience. She was also a painter, visiting museums and bringing back drawings from her travels which were exhibited. In 1938, she embarked on a journey by bicycle to Saigon, but her journey stopped in Aleppo when war was declared. Contacted by the German military intelligence service, she became a spy and then a double agent for England and played an important role in Operation Fortitude during the 1944 landings. Her three books and numerous press articles make it possible to follow the meteoric rise of this young woman nicknamed Lily, born in Russia in 1912, whose parents fled the Bolshevik revolution for France. She died at the age of 38 in the United States, having married an American soldier. Nathalie Sergueiew follows an original and atypical itinerary.

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