The Final Possession?

As a historical biographer, I aim to capture the spirit of people on paper. And yet my latest subject, Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, has taught me to respect her freedom too...

Slavers, dictators, murderers and biographers have all claimed ownership over the lives of others. It’s an unfortunate milieu, but not every biographer chooses to represent their books as the ‘definitive’ account of their subjects’ lives. Not only is it impossible to know that you have nailed down every fact, your selection of nails is equally subjective, as is the force and direction with which you choose hammer them home. Arguably the more ‘definitive’ a biography is hyped to be, the more ‘defined’ it probably is - by its author rather than its subject. There is nothing wrong with this, as long as it is understood. Biographies have long been considered as mirrors of their authors’ times and preoccupations as much as windows on to the lives of their subjects, and plenty of biographers since Lytton Strachey, with his Eminent Victorians, have made a virtue of their overt subjectivity. But then, perhaps this is as much an imposition as claiming to own the truth of another’s life. The real problem, perhaps, is how to balance the good biographer’s compulsive need to ‘possess’ their subject with the equally vital need to respect them.

I felt this dilemma particularly strongly when I started researching the life of Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of the Second World War. Christine was not a person to be owned, or even easily defined or contained. My biography is called The Spy Who Loved because she was a very passionate woman, loving life in its widest sense. She loved Adrenalin and adventure. She loved men; she had two husbands and numerous lovers. But most of all she loved freedom and independence: freedom for her country and freedom for herself. 

It is ironic then, that I soon discovered a wealth of people, mostly men, who had laid a claim to her both in life, and to her story after her death. Christine was not only the first woman to volunteer for Britain as a special agent, she was also the longest serving, taking on mission after mission in three different theatres of the war. That she died young is perhaps unsurprising, but Christine was not killed in action – she was murdered by an obsessed stalker in the lobby of a London hotel in 1952. Reportedly, as he was led from the docks, Christine’s killer, Dennis Muldowney, claimed that ‘to kill is the final possession’. But Muldowney was wrong. He had never possessed Christine in life, however intimate they might have once been, and he failed to stake his claim through her murder. 

Christine and Andrzej Kowerski-Kennedy

Devastated by his ultimate failure to protect her in person, Christine’s long-term lover, soul-mate and colleague-in-arms, Andrew Kowerski-Kennedy, dedicated much of the rest of his life to defending her reputation. In effect this meant representing or re-writing her life-story. During Muldowney’s public trial, Andrew arranged for a statement to be read out asserting that there was ‘not one particle of truth’ in Muldowney’s claims of intimacy with Christine. Thereafter he convened an all-male group of her former colleagues and closest friends as the ‘Panel to Protect the Memory of Christine Granville’, essentially by preventing any unapproved books or articles about her from being published. They proved effective. An anticipated screenplay by Christine’s old friend Bill Stanley Moss, best known as the author of Ill Met By Moonlight, was quashed, preventing a production that might have starred Sarah Churchill, Winston’s daughter, as Christine. Twenty years later a lyrical memoir by another former lover, Count Wladimir Ledochowski, also failed to win approval, and remained unpublished (although not lost). 

Much of the reason why Andrew was so protective was that Christine had led a very active life on all fronts. However much he adored her, Andrew seemed to feel that the polite world was not yet ready to embrace Christine in 1952. Another reason might have been that many of the members of his panel had not only been in love with Christine themselves, they were also married, meaning that in several cases there was more than one reputation at stake. Eventually, in 1975, Andrew agreed to support a biography of Christine by Madeleine Masson, essentially taking over the narrative drive himself through a series of personal interviews. Despite the pleading of some of the women who had known Christine, such as SOE’s Vera Atkins who told Masson not to ‘diminish her by white-washing her faults’, the book presented a thoroughly scrubbed and sanitised version of its subject. 

Having pieced this back-story together it was a great relief to me when I started my research, that Christine’s remaining friends and colleagues, and the descendants of many more, were so supportive of the project, pulling out letters and photographs, medals and jewellery, and sharing memories and anecdotes over sandwiches or over the internet. Even the nephew of her murderer kindly shared what he knew. Clearly people were keen that Christine should be remembered and celebrated in what is hopefully a less judgmental age. And yet, even then, I faced aggressive phone calls and on-line postings from three male writers who laid claim to Christine’s story. Christine was still mesmerising admirers, and it seemed they still did not understand that she never willingly entered into an exclusive relationship. 

I used a glorious number and variety of sources to inform my book, including interviews; official papers – some retrieved under the Freedom of Information Act; wonderfully personal letters to and from Christine – most previously unpublished; school reports; beauty queen photos; press articles and film clips; artefacts including her commando knife; published and unpublished memoirs; histories; and even novels written by some of the people she knew. When the hardback came out, I was thrilled that several more people who, or whose parents, had known Christine, now also got in touch. Some even told me new stories or details, the most pertinent of which are included in the paperback. 

Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, 1905-1952

And yet I know that my biography of Christine can never be definitive. No one ever possessed Christine. Not her parents. Not her two husbands, nor any of her lovers, and certainly not her biographers. If she was possessed by anything it was her drive to free her country, and to live a life of freedom herself. Christine’s defining passion was for liberty: in love, in politics, and in life in its widest sense. No self-respecting biographer could claim to capture her entirely; her spirit defies it. 

The Page 99 Test: The Spy Who Loved

"Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." --Ford Madox Ford

The Spy Who Loved

Page 99 of The Spy Who Loved touches a wonderful moment in the book when special agent Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, and her one-legged lover and comrade-in-arms Andrzej Kowerski, are making a getaway from the Gestapo in Budapest, before they start to flee across Europe in the spring of 1941.
Andrzej’s pride and joy was his sandy-brown, two-door Opel Olympia, which he had kept topped up with petrol but hidden in a dirty greenhouse in the gated courtyard behind his and Christine’s flat. This was the same car that he had driven out of Poland the year before, and in which he had escaped the Hungarian internment camp. The SS had raced Opels in 1938, and the following year the convertible became a favourite of high-ranking SS officers. It is entirely possible that Andrzej’s beloved car had once belonged to a discerning Wehrmacht officer, as his sister later proudly referred to it as his ‘spoils of the war with Germany’…
Displaying what the British simply called ‘great presence of mind’, Christine had just orchestrated her and Andrzej’s release from a brutal interrogation by biting her tongue so hard it had bled profusely, enabling her to pretend to cough up blood – a symptom of tuberculosis. Rightly terrified of this highly contagious disease, the Germans had kicked them both out. But Christine still had to plead her and Andrzej’s case to the British Minister at the Embassy, where they first sought refuge, before being ‘folded up like a penknife’ and driven across the border to free Yugoslavia in the boot of the Embassy car, with Andrzej following behind in the trusty Opel.

The Opel would take them on through Europe in the spring of 1941, sometimes weeks and sometimes just days ahead of the Nazi advance. On occasion Christine would smuggle highly incriminating microfilm inside her gloves, and sometimes Andrzej employed a special panel in his wooden leg for the same purpose. Eventually the car delivered them to the safety of the British base in Cairo. Here Christine would undertake some espionage, her methods perhaps suggested by her code-name, ‘Willing’, and she was also trained to be dropped into occupied France in July 1944, ahead of the Allied liberation in the south, where her work would make her truly legendary.


There is something rather wonderful about having them captured on page 99, not by the Gestapo, the Wehrmacht, or the frustrating bureaucracy of the Allies, but in mid-flight, showing typical chutzpah as they head off to new countries and undercover missions, admittedly with ‘bruised and swollen faces’ but also with a stolen German car, a hip-flask of Hungarian brandy, and some nice new British passports.

Dreamcast "The Spy Who Loved"

The Spy Who Loved

The eponymous Spy Who Loved was Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of WWII. This Polish, part-Jewish, Countess and pre-war beauty queen would become one of the most successful and highly decorated agents of the war. The book title is not only an oblique reference to James Bond – Christine was an inspiration for Bond’s creator Ian Fleming – but also a reference to Christine’s huge appetite for life, which she loved in its widest sense. She loved danger, adventure and adrenalin. She loved men – she had two husbands and numerous lovers. But most of all she loved freedom; freedom for her country, Poland, and the Allies, and freedom for herself. Who on earth could play such a woman and bring to life not only her magnetism, but her great patriotism, courage, determination, occasional cruelty and deep generosity?

The tempting answer is Rachel Weisz, not just a dark-haired beauty and action actress, but in real life Mrs James Bond, in that she is married to Daniel Craig. Or what about the stunning Eva Green who played Vesper Lynd, the Bond beauty reputedly inspired by Christine, in the 2006 film of Casino Royale? I would have to resist both, great actresses though both may be. The link to Bond is just too close for comfort. Christine’s life and achievements, even her looks, may have inspired Fleming, but she herself was much more Bond that Bond-girl. She demands an actress who will keep her centre stage.

Whether there will be a film of Krystyna’s remarkable life is yet to be seen, but it seems that casting her is already a popular game. In the 1950s a screenplay was written by Bill Stanley Moss, author of Ill Met By Moonlight (about his and Paddy Leigh Fermor’s WWII work as special agents in Crete). Moss knew Krystyna well, and also wrote a series of articles about her forPicture Post, but the film project was finally shelved. Had it not have been, we might have enjoyed watching Sarah Churchill, the actress daughter of British war-time leader Sir Winston Churchill, in the role that she was apparently keen to play. More recently Agnieszka Holland was rumoured to be interested in a biopic of Krystyna, and leading ladies mooted included Kate Winslet and Tilda Swinton. And only this week Jezebel.com considered the same thing, with Franka Potente, Noomi Rapace, Anna Chancellor and Sharleen Spiteri all being flagged up.

Personally I would plump for the excellent Agnieszka Grochowska, a charismatic actress who could bring Polish insight as well as the acting skill and great beauty required to really give depth to this extraordinary and complex woman. But whether any actress could capture Krystyna completely I doubt, and perhaps that is how she would have preferred things; to be known, admired, emulated even, but ultimately - still free

You’ve written the book – what next?

The Spy Who Loved Manuscript

My first biography, The Woman Who Saved the Children, about Eglantyne Jebb, the controversial founder of Save the Children, was a labour of love, and ‘labour’ and ‘delivery’ became the keys words when it came to finishing the book. I had started my research when I went on maternity leave from Save the Children, where I was working as a fundraiser, thinking I might be able to trot the book out before the baby arrived.

Six years, two jobs and two children later, I finally had most of a draft manuscript, an agent and a book deal. What I didn’t have was the last few chapters. By now heavily pregnant with what turned out to be daughter number three, my agent put a bet on which would be delivered first, the book or the baby. Baby won. The final chapter was written with her mainly on my lap (moving her even slightly seemed too risky), and typing away with one hand while she was latched on the other side. To say I was becoming slightly unbalanced was putting it mildly at this point, in more ways than one.

The irony is that Eglantyne, the wonderful founder of Save the Children, was not even fond of individual kids, ‘the little wretches’ as she once referred to them and never had children of her own. It seemed slightly wrong to be dedicating so much of my time to her story, just when I should be most absorbed in my own children. Although I had loved researching and writing Eglantyne’s story, and felt the full weight of responsibility for my precious book, it was with no slight relief that the manuscript finally went off and I believed I would be free.

The Woman Who Saved the Children

Oh no. For a book to flourish, it not only has to be well researched and well written, it needs to be well promoted.

Now began a series of book tours. Some were wonderful; I met some fabulous people actually interested in what I had written, and sat next to ‘other authors’ in the odd green room. Other events were less so, such as when I spoke to two people and a dog in a small London library – and they were only there to shelter from the rain. A highlight was being interviewed on Woman’s Hour. A low moment was when the email I had received from ‘Richard and Judy’ turned out to be from a local WI group, run by Judy and her husband Dick. Wish I’d realised that before I replied.

I wrote articles for everything from the Daily Mail to Save the Children’s newsletter and the British Thyroid Association magazine. I spent hours traipsing round bookshops offering, slightly embarrassed, to sign any copies they had, and I blogged. My first blogs went up on the Save the Children blog board, and the response was great. Later I was invited on blog tours. In a way I felt as though I had not deserted the book after all when it left home; the teenage book needed plenty of support too. But after a year or so it was definitely time for us both to let go.

The Spy Who Loved

Book number two, The Spy Who Loved, the secrets and lives of Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of WWII, was written much faster, with no new-borns or other jobs to distract me. Writing the life of a secret agent contained new challenges however. Christine had been taught not to leave a paper trail, and proved good at covering up her tracks. Fortunately, though, she also liked to tell a good story, as did the many men she dazzled in her sights as she made love to the cream of the British and Polish secret service while fighting the Nazi advance across Europe.

In the end, as is traditional with a second child, the delivery was easier, and I was not so shocked to find the finished book staring up at me in all its helpless innocence. This time I have gone into the book promotion phase with my eyes open and I am enjoying (almost) every moment. I have poured my heart into this book, and I am proud of the result. I am not going to let Christine’s story go into the world without all the support I can give it. It is worth the work, both professionally and personally. I am speaking at several literary festivals, as well as at museums and societies ranging from the Imperial War Museum to the Special Forces Club. Women’s Hour has invited me back, and last week I was on Radio Four’s Today programme and ITV news. I have given interviews and slogged round bookshops and spoken to an awful lot of members of the WI and Rotary clubs around the country.

The author,  giving a presentation

Once I was given a loaf of home-made bread by one fan of the book, another time when I was showing some slides of Christine and her fellow agents in the field when a voice piped up from the back of the room saying, ‘blimey, that’s my dad’. I have even been introduced to the woman who censored the files I ordered at the National Archives under the Freedom of Information Act, although she refused to tell me what was in the missing pages. It has been great fun, and I am just joining The History Girls to blog among friends about the things that we love: history, writing and people. But I know that ultimately I will have to let Christine go, just as I did Eglantyne, and watch to see if she survives in the crowded book-place on her own merits, or at least – since her own merits are not in doubt – if my books do these wonderful women justice.

What happens next? Well I have three children who I love very dearly – I think that is a full complement. But I have only written two books… I am now looking at other remarkable, unsung women, with whom I would like to share my life for the next few years.

Clare Mulley is the award-winning author of two biographies and a contributor to The Arvon Book of Life Writing. She is a seasoned public speaker and occasionally writes for publications including History Today, The Spectator, The Express and The Church Times, perfect titles for a historically minded, left-wing atheist.

Find out more on her website

The Spy Who Loved: the secrets and lives of Christine Granville, Britain’s first female special agent of World War II

‘Highly atmospheric… scholarly and tautly written’, The Economist

‘Compulsively readable… thrilling’, The Sunday Telegraph

‘Engrossing… as thrilling as any fiction’, The Mail on Sunday

‘A nerve-shredding read’, The Lady

‘Sterling biography… a fitting tribute’, Country Life

‘Scintillating and moving… one of the most exciting books… this year’, The Spectator

‘Riveting… Hollywood should sit up and take note!’, The Good Book Guide

The Spy Who Loved

First published in the "History on an Hour" blogsite,  2013

One can’t help but gasp with admiration at the life and exploits of Christine Granville, one of Britain’s bravest wartime heroines. On reading Clare Mulley’s entertaining new biography, The Spy Who Loved, we are introduced to a woman who lived life on the edge and who found ordinary, routine existence a bore. Mulley writes with almost a venerable regard for her subject and rightly so, for one would expect the life of Christine Granville to exist only within the pages of fiction. Indeed, she may well have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s character, Vesper Lynd, from his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale.

Born Krystyna Skarbek in Poland, 1908, to a rakish father, a count who taught her how to ride a horse like a man, and a wealthy, Jewish mother, Christine Granville, the name she later adopted, enjoyed an aristocratic, carefree childhood, whose tomboy antics earned the respect of her loving father. Granville disdained authority and convention from an early age, pushing boundaries wherever she went. As a convent schoolgirl, to cite one of several examples, she was expelled for setting fire to the priest’s cassock. (He was wearing it at the time).

Absolutely fearless

With the outbreak of war in September 1939, Granville and her second husband travelled to London where she offered her services to British intelligence. She was sent to Hungary and from there, skied into German-occupied Poland. And it is from here that Granville’s life of adventure, incredible courage and resilience begins. ‘She is,’ wrote one secret service report, ‘absolutely fearless … ready to risk her life at any moment for what she believed in’. What Granville believed in was to play an active role in undermining Nazi control of her beloved homeland.

Once, having been arrested by the Gestapo in Poland, she bit her tongue so hard as to make it bleed. The Germans, fearing she was suffering from the dreaded tuberculosis, released her. Mulley gives us plenty of examples like this, examples of what she calls Granville’s ‘sangfroid’.

Granville had ‘an almost pathological tendency to take risks’ and the British sought to find her work that was ‘sufficiently risky and bloodthirsty to appeal to her’. Her work gave her a purpose in life and, although hard to credit, its danger sometimes left her shaking with laughter, such was her addiction to adrenaline and risk.

Granville joined Britain’s SOE service, established in July 1940 on the orders of prime minister, Winston Churchill, and was to become the SOE’s longest-serving female agent.

Mulley takes us on an exhilarating journey as we follow Granville from Poland to Cairo and then, from July 1944, into Nazi-occupied France where she joined the resistance. It was here, in southeast France, that Granville embarked on perhaps her most daring undertaking. Three resistance colleagues had been arrested by the Germans and faced certain execution. Granville walked straight into the lion’s den of the Gestapo HQ and demanded to see the commander-in-charge. We read Mulley’s description of the episode with our hearts in our mouths; such is the extent of the risk and Granville’s bravado. It really is one of those occasions where, if you were reading this as a work of fiction, you would dismiss it as far-fetched.

The horrors of peace

Following the war, Granville, missing her adrenaline-fuelled life, found adjusting to ‘the horrors of peace’ difficult. Having been rendered stateless by Stalin’s post-war occupation of Poland, she had difficulty settling or finding employment. The British decorated her with enough medals and awards to make, as Mulley observes, a general envious, but they seemed particularly unable or unwilling to find her a job: ‘she is altogether not a very easy person to employ,’ wrote one dismissive report. That she had no office experience counted against her – as if a woman of Granville’s character could have been contained within the four walls of an office.

Christine Granville was murdered, aged 44, on 15 June 1952. This is not a spoiler, we know this from the off. But the way Mulley describes the impending tragedy is poignantly done. She describes Granville meeting Dennis Muldowney, a man with whom Granville experienced a brief if unfulfilling relationship, and we are filled with a sense of doom. Cast aside by Granville, Muldowney became obsessed by her. Without resorting to fiery prose, we, the reader, feel outraged as Mulley recounts the final days and hours of Granville’s life, leading to her violent and tragic end.

Granville loved men and men loved her. She was married twice, neither time particularly successful, and had numerous lovers. Men were hypnotized by her vibrancy and her love of life, but no man ever possessed her; no man would have been capable of it. As Clare Mulley states, writing for History In An Hour last year, ‘Nobody possessed Christine, not her father nor either of her husbands, not any of her lovers and certainly not her killer.’

Special Agent Christine Granville: "The spy who loved …"

On this day in 1939, just a few months after the Nazi invasion of Poland that had marked the start of WWII, a determined Polish Countess and former beauty queen marched in to British secret service headquarters and demanded to be sent on an active mission. ‘She is a flaming Polish patriot, an expert skier and great adventuress…’ the startled British officer reported, ‘I really believe we have a PRIZE’.

Countess Krystyna Skarbek is now better known in Britain by her adopted name of Christine Granville of which, she later wrote, she was ‘rather proud’. When she volunteered for service she was already on her second husband and third name, Krystyna Gizycka, and she was known on paper simply as ‘Madame G’. By the end of the war she had gone through many more identities, from her first alias, Mme Marchand, under which she was sent into Hungary in December 1939, to the ‘admitted libelous’ code-name the British gave her in Cairo, ‘Willing’, which spoke loudly both about Christine’s mode of gaining information, and the male British sense of humour of the time.

Christine was the first woman to work for the British as a special agent during the war. Despite having a life expectancy of just a few months while on operations, she was also Britain’s longest serving female agent, active in three different theatres of the war. For her outstanding courage and huge contribution to the Allied war effort, she was honoured with the OBE, the George Medal and the French Croix de Guerre as well as an array of service ribbons that would have made any General proud. And yet, as a woman, Christine was ineligible for British military honours, and had to accept their civil equivalent – something that enraged her and many of her female colleagues, one of whom wrote in disgust that there was ‘nothing remotely civil’ about what they had done.

Although Christine trained and served alongside men throughout the conflict, her gender always informed her experience of the war. She was in southern Africa when Poland was invaded, and by the time her ship reached Europe her home-country was occupied. Unable to sign up to fight alongside her compatriots, Christine determined to get Britain to support her plan to ski across the hazardous Carpathian mountains taking money and propaganda to the Polish resistance, and information – on microfilm hidden inside her gloves – back out. At this point the secret services were only recruiting through the Old Boys network, but Christine had contacts within this group and quickly used them to good effect. No other women would be taken on for another two years. Christine’s combination of independent-mindedness, determination and charm had given her the contacts she needed in Britain, Hungary and Poland, but it was her gender that ensured she would be less conspicuous travelling around an occupied country than any able-bodied man, and secured her the job. Christine was exceptional.

The Spy Who Loved

Christine crossed into occupied Poland four times over the next year, bringing back information that at times had the potential to change the course of the war, and helping to ‘exfiltrate’ thousands of Polish and other Allied officers to continue the fight overseas. When occasion demanded she was quick to exploit her femininity to good effect, once charming a Wehrmacht officer into carrying her package of ‘black-market tea’, in fact incriminatory documents, through a security check. She also happily made love to the cream of the Polish and British secret services in every country she crossed, many of whom later described the ‘mesmeric power’ she held over men.

But Christine also fully employed her contacts, language skills, creative brilliance and sheer blunt courage both to undertake her missions, and to save not only her own life, but also the lives of several fellow officers and agents. Once under interrogation in Hungary she feigned tuberculosis by biting her tongue so hard that it looked as though she was coughing up blood, until she and a compatriot were thrown out. On another occasion, in occupied France, she walked into Gestapo headquarters and demanded the release of three colleague just hours before they were due to be shot. Using a combination of bribery, and bravado about the ‘imminent’ approach of Allied forces, she saved the lives of the men and went on with them to help coordinate the resistance in advance of the Allied liberation of the south of France.

Yet at the end of the war, in May 1945, Christine was dismissed with just £100. A British memo stated simply, ‘she is no longer wanted’. As an aristocrat and former British agent, Christine knew she could not return to post-war Communist Poland. But as a Pole, and a woman, it was soon clear that she was not hugely welcome in Britain either. The qualities that had made her so valuable as an agent during the war were no longer appreciated in women during the peace. Without secretarial skills she was difficult to place, memos moaned, and she was soon being referred to as ‘this girl’, while her applications for continued work were dismissed as ‘a headache’. The country that had employed Christine to risk her life in three different theatres of war, now only begrudgingly gave her citizenship and completely failed to provide work worthy of her service and abilities.

In 1952, after seven years of menial jobs in London and as a stewardess on various passenger ships, Christine was stabbed to death by a rejected lover. It was a pathetic end for such an extraordinary woman. Although very few special agents have been murdered for love, at least outside of novels, Christine should not be remembered as a tragically romantic figure. Today women in the Resistance are all too often seen in such terms. Perhaps the best known female special agent is Sebastian Faulks’ heroine, Charlotte Grey, and she is not only fictional but achieves very little. Even the most famous true stories, of Violette Szabo and Odette Samson, celebrate outstanding courage and sacrifice rather than significant achievement. If my new biography of Christine contributes anything, I hope it will highlight the role, use and abuse of Poland during the war, and rebalance the view on the effectiveness of British female agents.

Christine Granville – The Spy Who Loved

Despite having a life expectancy of only a few months during her operational missions, Christine volunteered to serve in three different theatres of war. From Hungary she skied across the Tatra mountains in blizzards of minus thirty, taking money and propaganda into occupied Poland, and arranging to smuggle men and information – the latter hidden inside her gloves – back out. In Egypt, where a British SOE memo notes that her ‘admittedly libelous’ code name was ‘Willing’, she filled a useful role in information gathering. However she earned her highest decorations for her extraordinary work helping prepare the way for the Allied liberation of France, having been the only woman dropped in by parachute from Algeria, in July 1944.

The Spy Who Loved

 And yet Christine’s story is little known today. The reasons for this are to a large extent personal. In the days after Christine’s brutal murder in post-war London, in 1952, sensational headlines blazed across the British papers, ‘Kindness led to Murder’, ‘Drama of Quiet Countess who was British Secret Agent’ and ‘Heroine Dared Me Three Times to Kill Her’ among them. Distraught that ultimately he could not save her life, Christine’s on/off lover and long-term soul mate, Andrzej Kowerski, made it his mission to at least now protect her reputation. Roping in a group of men, mostly former agents, who adored Christine, he created the ‘Panel to Protect the Memory of Christine Granville’. Several articles and two proposed books, one by Christine’s former lover Count Wladimir Ledóchowski, the other by her colleague, the Ill Met by Moonlight author Bill Stanley Moss, were quashed. And yet as Count Ledóchowski’s son has said, ‘the death of heroes is not usually followed by panels to protect their memories and stop books about them’.

Part of what made Christine so successful is that she did not operate, or live, like a woman of her time. My new biography of her is called The Spy Who Loved because Christine loved life in its fullest sense. She loved adrenalin and adventure, she loved men – she had two husbands and numerous lovers, and above all she loved freedom – both for her country and for herself. Ironically this twin passion, for action and liberty, that helped her to be so successful during the war, made her far less acceptable in the peace. After her death the men who had jumped into Christine’s life, ‘like parachuters into unknown territory’ hoped to protect Christine’s reputation and with it, in several cases, their own, in a highly judgmental age.

Christine Granville

Before his execution Christine’s murderer claimed that ‘to kill is the final possession’. He was wrong. Nobody possessed Christine, not her father nor either of her husbands, not any of her lovers and certainly not her killer. The resistance burning within her was too strong. Christine Granville is long overdue recognition, her story deserves to be told and her reputation set free.

Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved, the secrets and lives of Christine Granville, Britain’s first special agent of WWII, is published by Macmillan. 

See here for History In An Hour’s review.