Is the character of Charlotte Gray based on a real-life S...

Is the character of Charlotte Gray based on a real-life Second World War agent?

No. no. no! I don’t do ‘based on’. I am a novelist. I make things. Here is an article I wrote for the Times when a real agent, Nancy Wake, died in 2011…

Nancy Wake, the SOE agent who has just died, was a formidable woman whose exploits in France were celebrated by French, British and American governments. She was a brave, cussed, outspoken, indomitable person. What she was not was the ‘model for’ my fictional char...