Underlying book story — recording-specific coverage unverified
Coverage is limited to the scope described in this write-up. Recording changes, further installments or an unwritten ending may remain outside it.
During the French Revolution, the Scarlet Pimpernel, who is really Sir Percy Blakeney in disguise, risks his life to rescue French aristocrats from the guillotine and take them across the English Channel to safety. As cover, Sir Percy poses as a fop at Court and curries favour with the Prince of Wales by providing advice about fashion, but secretly he leads The League, a group of noblemen with similar views.
Chauvelin, the French ambassador to England, wants to find out who the Pimpernel is, so he can be brought to French justice. He blackmails Blakeney's French wife Marguerite into helping him by threatening to have her brother Armand (an associate of the Pimpernel) arrested and tortured. She intercepts a letter intended for the Pimpernel and gives it to Chauvelin, unaware that she has betrayed her husband. When she discovers the truth, she sets out to warn him of his great peril.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Underlying book identified by the catalog’s explicit book_slug relation. Exact source annotation 1018. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, The Elusive Pimpernel (1949 film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license