The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville by Mulley. Clare Page A
Authors: Mulley. Clare
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his and Paddy Leigh Fermor’s successful mission to kidnap the German general Heinrich Kreipe on Crete during the war, and there was talk of turning Christine’s story into a screenplay for a film to star Winston Churchill’s actress-daughter, Sarah, in the title role. However, Christine’s soul-mate and posthumous protector, Andrzej Kowerski, rejected the manuscript. The whereabouts of Moss’s draft is now unknown, but his daughter, Christine Isabelle (named after Christine), invited me to see his notes, full of humour and opinion, along with his collection of papers relating to Christine, including some unlikely love letters, Andrzej Kowerski’s Polish passport and Christine’s false French identity papers.
Count Wladimir Ledóchowski, another war hero and one of Christine’s Polish lovers, started his account of Christine twenty years later. The unfinished manuscript presents a very lyrical and critically admiring picture of Christine, and was also rejected by Andrzej. Ledóchowski’s son, Jan, kindly gave me a copy of the manuscript among other papers (and lent me his Warsaw flat during my research, outside which I was held up by the Gestapo during a Polish film shoot one afternoon). Although subtitled ‘A Biographical Story’, it is clear that Ledóchowski undertook thorough research, both on location and through interviews with people now deceased.
The first published biography was Madeleine Masson’s Christine: A Search for Christine Granville, which came out in 1975. Masson had met Christine on a passenger ship in 1952, just before she was killed. Twenty years later her biography was mainly informed by Andrzej Kowerski, and the circle of male friends who had known Christine during the war and stayed in touch with each other after her death. The resulting book is invaluable for presenting Andrzej’s perspective on Christine. Unfortunately he wished to present her in what he considered a good, rather than necessarily true, light.
Some years later came the Polish author Maria Nurowska’s novel, Miło ś nica. Although often dismissed as pure fiction, the book was informed by three primary sources: interviews with some of Christine’s London friends; Wladimir Ledóchowski’s manuscript; and the recollections of the author’s father, who knew Christine before and during the war. Maria met me in Zakopane to disentangle fact from fiction, and told me how struck she had been with the overlap between Ledóchowski’s account and her father’s own memories.
A final publication, Krystyna Skarbek: Agent with Many Faces, by Colonel Jan Larecki, a former intelligence officer with the postwar Communist government in Poland, is a helpful facts-and-stats account of Christine’s life with a few new theories of its own. Colonel Larecki agreed to meet me, in Warsaw, to discuss stories and sources. It is not often in life that I have had my hand kissed by a chain-smoking, espresso-drinking, former Communist spy, and afterwards I had to think hard about just how charmed I had been.
It is still sometimes suggested that there is another published portrait of Christine, found in Ian Fleming’s first Bond outing, the 1952 Casino Royale. The story that Christine and Fleming had an affair is appealing. She was certainly his type, and his descriptions of the dark and enigmatic Eastern European agent, perpetually caught between sunbathing and action, fit Christine well. But although Fleming and Christine had several mutual friends, and he talked about her after her death had made her momentarily famous, there is no reliable evidence that the two ever actually met. A more evidence-based, if still fictionalized, account of Christine appears in Kate O’Malley and her mother Ann Bridge’s novel, A Place to Stand, based on their wartime exploits in Budapest.
The National Archive in Britain has many files on Christine, her colleagues and operations, which have been released over the last few years, and the Freedom of
Count Wladimir Ledóchowski, another war hero and one of Christine’s Polish lovers, started his account of Christine twenty years later. The unfinished manuscript presents a very lyrical and critically admiring picture of Christine, and was also rejected by Andrzej. Ledóchowski’s son, Jan, kindly gave me a copy of the manuscript among other papers (and lent me his Warsaw flat during my research, outside which I was held up by the Gestapo during a Polish film shoot one afternoon). Although subtitled ‘A Biographical Story’, it is clear that Ledóchowski undertook thorough research, both on location and through interviews with people now deceased.
The first published biography was Madeleine Masson’s Christine: A Search for Christine Granville, which came out in 1975. Masson had met Christine on a passenger ship in 1952, just before she was killed. Twenty years later her biography was mainly informed by Andrzej Kowerski, and the circle of male friends who had known Christine during the war and stayed in touch with each other after her death. The resulting book is invaluable for presenting Andrzej’s perspective on Christine. Unfortunately he wished to present her in what he considered a good, rather than necessarily true, light.
Some years later came the Polish author Maria Nurowska’s novel, Miło ś nica. Although often dismissed as pure fiction, the book was informed by three primary sources: interviews with some of Christine’s London friends; Wladimir Ledóchowski’s manuscript; and the recollections of the author’s father, who knew Christine before and during the war. Maria met me in Zakopane to disentangle fact from fiction, and told me how struck she had been with the overlap between Ledóchowski’s account and her father’s own memories.
A final publication, Krystyna Skarbek: Agent with Many Faces, by Colonel Jan Larecki, a former intelligence officer with the postwar Communist government in Poland, is a helpful facts-and-stats account of Christine’s life with a few new theories of its own. Colonel Larecki agreed to meet me, in Warsaw, to discuss stories and sources. It is not often in life that I have had my hand kissed by a chain-smoking, espresso-drinking, former Communist spy, and afterwards I had to think hard about just how charmed I had been.
It is still sometimes suggested that there is another published portrait of Christine, found in Ian Fleming’s first Bond outing, the 1952 Casino Royale. The story that Christine and Fleming had an affair is appealing. She was certainly his type, and his descriptions of the dark and enigmatic Eastern European agent, perpetually caught between sunbathing and action, fit Christine well. But although Fleming and Christine had several mutual friends, and he talked about her after her death had made her momentarily famous, there is no reliable evidence that the two ever actually met. A more evidence-based, if still fictionalized, account of Christine appears in Kate O’Malley and her mother Ann Bridge’s novel, A Place to Stand, based on their wartime exploits in Budapest.
The National Archive in Britain has many files on Christine, her colleagues and operations, which have been released over the last few years, and the Freedom of
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