The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville in Espionage Aficionados

Feb 22, 2014 Cold War Conversations Podcast rated it really liked it

Fascinating story of SOE's longest serving woman agent, and recipient of the George Medal, the OBE and the Croix de Guerre.

Clare Mulley has turned up a little known tale of a woman who fought not only the Nazis but the 1940s prejudices against an independent minded woman.
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Apr 15, 2023 Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Whatever it is that his fans want to think James Bond may have been or done in fictional Cold War espionage, Christine Granville did it in the real world of occupied World War II Europe. Respected historian Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville (Paperback) tells us as much of the real story as can be filtered from both incomplete and conflicting official records and a fan club of Granville’s, surviving, mostly male associates were allowing into print.

Chr Whatever it is that his fans want to think James Bond may have been or done in fictional Cold War espionage, Christine Granville did it in the real world of occupied World War II Europe. Respected historian Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville (Paperback) tells us as much of the real story as can be filtered from both incomplete and conflicting official records and a fan club of Granville’s, surviving, mostly male associates were allowing into print.

Christine Granville was born to privilege in Poland, connected to its past its culture and the less than gentile relations with its own Jewish history. By 1939 she had been a beauty queen, an accomplished athlete and deep within a patriot. Early on she knew to hate what the German Nazi’s wanted and escaped from their pre-war efforts to remove possible problem people from later to be occupied countries. Poland was clearly in their sights. Being anti-German was not something a previously free Polish woman was going to be able to stay at home and do.

No one was going to make her do office work. She became a secret operative. Engaged in helping allies escape from several occupied countries, moving weapons, money and information into allied hands. And along the way not only escaping, nude, from the Gestapo, but arranging an even more audacious escape for other resistance leaders. She would also love several men, including her husband also a Polish war hero and fellow spy. Often stalled and side lined by both political considerations (helping the British was not a way to be popular among the Polish Resistance) and people who either underappreciated her skills, or feared for her risk taking, she was also schmoozing in nightclubs, seeking information and perhaps helping to conduct counter espionage. In other words, she did out drink and out ‘playboy’ in a real world as opposed to the too many fictional male spies.

As a reader, one of the better things happening is the seriously, too late recognition of and contributions by women. Author Clare Mulley is to be thanked for doing the hard work to get us the best documented and most human picture of Ms. Granville.
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