Jan Leeming

The official website of Jan Leeming.

Tv & radio interviewer, newsreader, actress, author and voiceover artiste.


Searching for René - Publication

Thursday, 31 March 2022 19:56

I never believed it would happen. I always wanted to write about my adventurous search for René Mouchotte.  My Documentary was transmitted in early 2013 on various BBC Regional Stations.  The research had taken me six years - on and off. The actual search was fascinating and took me from Capel le Ferne, Folkestone, to Paris; Père Lachaise Cemetery; a small Airfield - Aerogare Blériot north of Calais; Westende and Middelkerke in  Belgium; British Ambassador’s Residence, Paris and finally Gibraltar - having met members of René’s family along the way.

Nothing really happens by chance does it?  I’d almost given up ever writing down the story of my Search until recently.  I’m very involved with the Battle of Britain Memo

rial Trust and the beautiful memorial at Capel Le Ferne.  Recently a prolific writer of books about WW2 was visiting Capel and my name was mentioned coupled with that of René.  The outcome was that this gentleman, Dilip Sarkar contacted me.  We communicated endlessly by email and discovered very similar interests.  I gave him one of my precious copies of The Mouchotte Diaries in English and told him of my desire to write down my story leading up to the Documentary.  Within a fortnight it was a done deed.  René Mouchotte’s diaries - Mes Carnets - are going to be republished in English with all the appendices omitted from a more recent publication and My Search will be a kind of Epilogue to the Book.

I couldn’t be more pleased and now have to go through a 2ft pile of notes, notebooks and files to write the story.  Publication should be sometime in 2023.