The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Mulley. Clare
Authors: Mulley. Clare
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A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you Ian, for your kindness and cleverness, and the wonderful Kate, Gill and Derek Mulley, Michelle Wheeler and George Morley, for all their excellent editing. Thanks also to my agent, Andrew Lownie, who first introduced me to Christine.
This book could not have been written without the generous support of many people who knew Christine and her circle, and their relatives, including Countess Mary ś Skarbek and Count Andrew Skarbek, Elizabeth Skarbek, Maria Pienkowska, Count Jan Ledóchowski, Christine Isabelle Cole, Suzanna Gayford, Christopher Kasparek, Jane Bigman-Hartley, Ann Bonsor, Julian de Boscari, Tim Buckmaster, Harriet Crawley, Diana Hall, Eva Hryniewicz, Daniel Huillier, Krystian Jelowicki, Princess Renata Lubomirski, Zbigniew Mieczkowski, Steven Muldowney, Izabela Muszkowska, Countess Jolanta Mycielska, Maria Nurowska, Ann O’Regan, Margaret Pawley, Julian Pope, Ivor Porter, Noreen Riols, Teresa Robinska, Krystyna Sass, Matt Smolenski, Tom Sweet-Escott, Ada Tarnowska, Andrew Tarnowski, Dorothy Wakely, Michael Ward, Joanna Cammaerts-Wey, Katharine Whitehorn, Sarah Willert and Virginia Worsley. Thank you all for taking the time to share your memories and family stories.
My very sincere thanks are also due to the very knowledgeable and generous Dr Jeffrey Bines, oral historian Martyn Cox, the late SOE historian M. R. D. Foot, former coder Maureen Gadd, Nicholas Gibbs, Maciek and Iwona Helfer, Major Chris Hunter, Krystyna Kaplan, SOE historian Steven Kippax, Michal Komar, Captain Kozac, Christine’s Polish biographer Colonel Jan Larecki, Warsaw genealogist Tomasz Lenczewski, Eugenia Maresch, Dr Michael Peske, Monika Plichta, Dominik Rettinger-Wieczorkowski, Ian Sayer, Albertine Sharples, Dr David Stafford, Dr Penny Starns, Benita Stoney, B ę czkowice parish priest Henryk Szymanski, Anna Teicher, and film director Mieczysława Wazacz, as well as the archivists and historians at the British Library; the Imperial War Museum; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London; Le Musée de la Résistance de Vassieux-en-Vercors, France; the Museum of Pawiak Prison; the National Archives, Kew; the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, London; the Warsaw Royal Castle archive; the Warsaw Uprising Museum; and specifically to Susan Tomkins, archivist at Beaulieu; Duncan Stuart, former chairman of the Special Forces Club’s Historical Sub-Committee; Dr Władysław Bułhak and Natalia Jarska at the Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw; and Krzysztof Barbarski and Dr Andrzej Suchcitz at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London.
My Search for Christine Granville: a note on sources
Researching the life of a secret agent entails inherent difficulties. Christine herself kept few records; I have seen only eleven letters actually written in her own hand, and one of these was just a note scrawled on the squared paper used for coding radio messages. Many official and unofficial papers relating to her have been destroyed by accident or on purpose, while others may remain unreleased. Those papers that are available are often contradictory. Letters are notoriously unreliable, and reports and interrogations often had a hidden agenda during and after the war. Even when first-hand testimony is available, Christine herself was not above telling a good story, and sometimes a very blunt lie, from her use of a commando knife to her date of birth, so it is sometimes hard to discriminate between fact and fiction. I am not the first to struggle with these problems. There have been three previously published biographies of Christine, and two unpublished. Of these, two are self-proclaimed ‘fictional-biographies’, although they are both based on first-hand accounts.
The first biography of Christine was written by Bill Stanley Moss, her friend and a fellow former SOE agent. When he started work on it, Moss was already well known as the author of Ill Met By Moonlight, an account of
Thank you Ian, for your kindness and cleverness, and the wonderful Kate, Gill and Derek Mulley, Michelle Wheeler and George Morley, for all their excellent editing. Thanks also to my agent, Andrew Lownie, who first introduced me to Christine.
This book could not have been written without the generous support of many people who knew Christine and her circle, and their relatives, including Countess Mary ś Skarbek and Count Andrew Skarbek, Elizabeth Skarbek, Maria Pienkowska, Count Jan Ledóchowski, Christine Isabelle Cole, Suzanna Gayford, Christopher Kasparek, Jane Bigman-Hartley, Ann Bonsor, Julian de Boscari, Tim Buckmaster, Harriet Crawley, Diana Hall, Eva Hryniewicz, Daniel Huillier, Krystian Jelowicki, Princess Renata Lubomirski, Zbigniew Mieczkowski, Steven Muldowney, Izabela Muszkowska, Countess Jolanta Mycielska, Maria Nurowska, Ann O’Regan, Margaret Pawley, Julian Pope, Ivor Porter, Noreen Riols, Teresa Robinska, Krystyna Sass, Matt Smolenski, Tom Sweet-Escott, Ada Tarnowska, Andrew Tarnowski, Dorothy Wakely, Michael Ward, Joanna Cammaerts-Wey, Katharine Whitehorn, Sarah Willert and Virginia Worsley. Thank you all for taking the time to share your memories and family stories.
My very sincere thanks are also due to the very knowledgeable and generous Dr Jeffrey Bines, oral historian Martyn Cox, the late SOE historian M. R. D. Foot, former coder Maureen Gadd, Nicholas Gibbs, Maciek and Iwona Helfer, Major Chris Hunter, Krystyna Kaplan, SOE historian Steven Kippax, Michal Komar, Captain Kozac, Christine’s Polish biographer Colonel Jan Larecki, Warsaw genealogist Tomasz Lenczewski, Eugenia Maresch, Dr Michael Peske, Monika Plichta, Dominik Rettinger-Wieczorkowski, Ian Sayer, Albertine Sharples, Dr David Stafford, Dr Penny Starns, Benita Stoney, B ę czkowice parish priest Henryk Szymanski, Anna Teicher, and film director Mieczysława Wazacz, as well as the archivists and historians at the British Library; the Imperial War Museum; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London; Le Musée de la Résistance de Vassieux-en-Vercors, France; the Museum of Pawiak Prison; the National Archives, Kew; the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, London; the Warsaw Royal Castle archive; the Warsaw Uprising Museum; and specifically to Susan Tomkins, archivist at Beaulieu; Duncan Stuart, former chairman of the Special Forces Club’s Historical Sub-Committee; Dr Władysław Bułhak and Natalia Jarska at the Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw; and Krzysztof Barbarski and Dr Andrzej Suchcitz at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum, London.
My Search for Christine Granville: a note on sources
Researching the life of a secret agent entails inherent difficulties. Christine herself kept few records; I have seen only eleven letters actually written in her own hand, and one of these was just a note scrawled on the squared paper used for coding radio messages. Many official and unofficial papers relating to her have been destroyed by accident or on purpose, while others may remain unreleased. Those papers that are available are often contradictory. Letters are notoriously unreliable, and reports and interrogations often had a hidden agenda during and after the war. Even when first-hand testimony is available, Christine herself was not above telling a good story, and sometimes a very blunt lie, from her use of a commando knife to her date of birth, so it is sometimes hard to discriminate between fact and fiction. I am not the first to struggle with these problems. There have been three previously published biographies of Christine, and two unpublished. Of these, two are self-proclaimed ‘fictional-biographies’, although they are both based on first-hand accounts.
The first biography of Christine was written by Bill Stanley Moss, her friend and a fellow former SOE agent. When he started work on it, Moss was already well known as the author of Ill Met By Moonlight, an account of
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