Krystyna skarbek biography

Clare Mulley on the daring exploits of a highly decorated WWII special agent.

Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, was the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent during the Second World War.

She was also the longest-serving.

Her extraordinary contribution to the Allied effort in three theatres of the war led to her being presented with the George Medal and OBE in Britain, the Croix de Guerre with one star from France, and enough ribbons to make any general proud.

Yet she died just seven years after the end of the conflict, murdered in a south London hotel with a commando knife much like the one she herself had carried during the war.

SMUGGLER TO SPY

The daughter of a Polish aristocrat and Jewish banking heiress, and a pre-war Polish beauty queen, Skarbek was not an obvious prospect for the British Secret Intelligence Services.

Most SIS officers and agents were recruited through the ‘old boys’ network’, an