Simon Kitson is a British historian specializing in Vichy France. He is the Director of Research at the University of London Institute in Paris (ULIP) and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society .

His lecture will deal with a sensitive topic in modern French history: the bombing campaigns on French territory from 1940. Having started the campaign alone, the British were joined by American bombers and as a result, by 1944, these bombings had killed more civilians than the German raids on Britain. Simon Kitson will explore the effects those raids had on the lives and attitudes of ordinary French people, and how they affected attitudes towards all the belligerents.