The Spy Who Loved - Hardcover

Clare Mulley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0230759513 ISBN 13: 9780230759510

Publisher: MacMillan, 2012

Synopsis

Just weeks after Germany invaded her homeland, Christine Granville, (born Krystyna Skarbek), the daughter of a Polish aristocrat, arrived in London and demanded to work for the British Secret Service. Described in an intelligence report as a great adventuress and absolutely fearless, she became one of the SOEs most daring, determined and highly decorated agents. This biography tells the story of a charismatic woman who loved men and sex, adrenalin and adventure, but found it hard to adjust to post-war life. Off-mint.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2013: Mere weeks after Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland, a woman the British Secret Services described as a "flaming Polish patriot, expert skier and great adventuress" had made her way back from South Africa to London with a brazen proposal: to ski into Poland from Hungary via the Carpathian Mountains. By the time Hitler's forces fell, Christine Granville had accomplished this and more extraordinary feats, delivering supplies, gathering vital intelligence, and defying expectations. She became Britain's first (and longest serving) female special agent, conducting undercover operations in two occupied countries and missions in numerous theaters of war, rescuing officers minutes before their execution and bringing hundreds of POWs back to the front lines. This story of how a charismatic Jewish Countess and beauty queen--raised to be a sedate society wife--parlayed her crackling vitality, flair for languages, and intrepid determination into action that directly undermined the Nazis makes for a sweepingly cinematic read. Churchill's favorite spy, one of the most decorated female intelligence agents of WWII, and one of her era's most liberated (and desired) women, Granville was driven by a passion for liberty "in love, in politics, and in life in the widest sense." Mulley has a sensitive, elegant, and wry way with Granville's story, informed by deep research into the scant published and complex unpublished material, and coupled with her own new interviews Christine's living friends and their children that vividly humanize her. And while her murder in 1952 at the hands of a jealous lover robbed her of the chance to fully realize her post-war promise, The Spy Who Loved is a marvelous tribute to her life and legacy. --Mari Malcolm

About the Author

CLARE MULLEY is the author of The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, which won the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize. She is a contributor to The Arvon Book of Life Writing and is a seasoned public speaker. She has written for History Today, The Express, and The Church Times.

About this edition

• Publisher: MacMillan
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0230759513
• ISBN 13: 9780230759510
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1