The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville

In January 1941 Krystyna Gizycka, and her lover and resistance partner Andrzej Kowerski, were on the run from the Gestapo and Hungarian military police. They had just been thrown out of jail after Krystyna faked the symptoms of tuberculosis by biting her tongue so hard she was able to ‘cough up’ blood, but they knew they were still under surveillance. Having momentarily shaken off their tail they raced round to the British Embassy where the Minister, who had a soft spot for the beautiful and courageous Krystyna, agreed to smuggle her over the border in the boot of the Embassy Chrysler. As the Minister pressed his guests, urgently, for details to put in their false passports, Krystyna calmly took the opportunity to knock seven years off her age with a new date of birth. The legendary Christine Granville had been created.

In many ways a difficult woman, with an almost pathological love of danger, Christine was one of the most daring, successful, and most loved of all the Allies’ female special agents in the Second World War. A willowy dark beauty, Christine was born into the Polish landed gentry and was used to commanding respect and adoration. When Germany invaded Poland, on 1st September 1939, she embarked on her own patriotic endeavours and made several illegal crossings, skiing over the hazardous Tatra mountains between Hungary and Poland to rescue Polish prisoners of war, and bring back intelligence on the German occupation. Swearing allegiance to the British government in their fight against the Nazis, Christine’s missions took her through Hungary and Poland; Palestine, Egypt and Algiers; France and Italy, saving the lives of several of her lovers and fellow officers en route. Her huge contribution to the Allied war effort included providing early evidence of Hitler’s planned invasion of Russia, and securing the defection of a German garrison controlling the alpine passes between France and Italy. In many ways the prototype beautiful female special agent she was awarded the George Medal, OBE and Croix de Guerre for her outstanding courage and achievements.

This book explores the remarkable life of the passionate woman who broke all the rules when she chose to exchange comfort and security as a diplomatic wife, for being shot at while fighting the Nazi advance across occupied Europe. From the wild days of her childhood to her brutal murder at the hands of an obsessed stalker, Christine’s life was littered with daring exploits, exhilarating love affairs and tragic loss. But it is only now that her SOE files, the court papers surrounding her murder, and the unpublished memoirs of her many lovers and admirers have become available, that her remarkable story can be told in full.

Book Author

Clare-mulley Clare Mulley's first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb, Founder of Save the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographers' Club prize, and was widely praised. She is now working on a biography of Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work as a secret agent for the British in the Second World War. She has also recently contributed to the Arvon Book of Life Writing.Clare has worked at several NGOs including Save the Children and the national charity Standing Together Against Domestic Violence. She is now a popular speaker at literary and ...
more about Clare Mulley...

Book Reviews

  • Sunday Telegraph
    "...this compulsively readable biography...a thrilling book."
  • Sunday Times
    "Clare Mulley brings alive a glamorous, swashbuckling heroine."
  • Mail on Sunday
    "...engrossing biography details the high-voltage life of one of Britain's most remarkable female spies... Fascinating."
  • Saga
    "Clare Mulley tells her story with a bravura that matches Christine's charismatic character."
  • The Lady
    "...a nerve-shredding read."
  • Lancashire Evening Post
    "Mulley gets to the heart of a charismatic and fearless woman."
  • Sunday Express
    "Mulley's fastidiously researched tome provides the most detailed picture yet."
  • Miranda Seymour, The Daily Telegraph
    "  ...told with terrific elan and mesmerising detail...her splendid book...the latest in a line of talented writers to seize on a splendid subject, Christine Granville remains as alive, well and compelling as ever..."
  • Roderick Bailey, Literary Review
    "    Drawing on an unprecedented range of sources, Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved is a fine account of Christine Granville’s extraordinary war, told with skill and care...Mulley succeeds in making her human...What is quite clear from this inspiring biography is that Granville was as charismatic as she was courageous."
  • Encore Magazine
    "Assiduously researched, passionately written and highly atmospheric... A scholarly and tautly written account."
  • Daily Mail
    "...painstakingly disentangles her complex story and equally complex character. Clare Mulley has made a fine and soberly thrilling addition to the literature of the undercover war - the sort that does not exaggerate or mythologise... This book, massively researched and excitingly told, brings an extraordinary heroine back to life."
  • Alistair Horne, The Spectator
    "  Scintillating and moving... a meticulously researched but also highly readable account of Krystyna’s heroic but unfulfilled and deeply tragic life without any attempt at gloss. It is one of the most exciting books I’ve read this  year."
  • Country LIfe
    "..sterling biography does justice to Granville’s career as Britain’s first female secret agent of the Second World War…with Miss Mulley’s biography Christine Granville has finally received a fitting tribute. "
  • The Good Book Guide
    "This riveting account of Christine Granville's life is a good example of truth being stranger than fiction...a gripping story that has been a long time in the telling Hollywood should sit up and take note!"
  • The Economist
    "Assiduously researched, passionately written and highly atmospheric biography… a scholarly and tautly written account of secret operation in occupied Europe."
  • Sam Leith, The Guardian
    "This story of ripping yarns and ripping stockings… romance was one thing, but it was danger that really seemed to ring Christine’s bell."
  • Mark Seaman, Times Literary Supplement
    "Clare Mulley has marshalled an impressive array of sources in bringing her subject to life... there is much to admire in The Spy Who Loved. Not least that, in spite of the mesmerizing personality of its subject, the temptation to drift into hagiography to which several other biographers of female SOE agents have succumbed is avoided... Clare Mulley has evidently taken Poland’s wartime vicissitudes to her heart and, where it was her intention or not, she has rendered Granville’s life as an allegory of that nation’s travails in the first half of the twentieth century."
  • The Jewish Chronicle
    "Mulley has a novelist’s eye for detail… in this clear, highly satisfying biography, Mulley fleshes out her subject and brings her back to life."
  • The Week
    "Book of the Week."
  • Voyager (BMI)
    "Mulley tells her story with brio, and this book is just the job for anyone who loved Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag."
  • Word magazine
    "She remains a fascinating figure...worthy of this weighty biography."
  • Newmarket Journal, Suffolk Free Press, Bury Free Press
    "This is a remarkable life and expertly handled by Mulley here."
  • The Leader (Chester)
    "An incredible biography of an incredible woman."
  • Darlington and Stockton Times Evening News (Norwich)
    "An incredible biography of an incredible woman."
  • HUB Magazine (Saffron Walden)
    "Superb… hugely compelling."
  • Anne Sebba, That Woman: the life of Wallace Simpson
    "A breath-taking story told with panache and sympathy for an extraordinary heroine."
  • Jojo Moyes, Me Before You, The Girl You Left Behind
    "Impressively researched, and absolutely fascinating. Christine Granville is one of those women you can't help wishing you'd met in real life."
  • Simon Mawer, The Glass Room, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
    "I enjoyed and admired The Spy Who Loved... a really gripping account of the remarkable Christine Granville."
  • Charles Cumming
    "An astonishing story, brilliantly told. If a Hollywood movie isn't made about Christine Granville's remarkable life, I'd be amazed."
  • Daily Mail Year’s Best Biographies
    "Clare Mulley has brought to light a long-overdue tale of a remarkable heroine."
  • The Times
    "She has woven the romantic account of the heroine’s courage, enterprise and occasional despair when denied an active role against the enemy, into the intricate and confusing fabric of the war in Eastern Europe and the Levant with rare perception. The depth of her research authenticates a test of suspense and daring..."
  • Sunday Telegraph
    "  An audacious spy with a tangled love life, beautiful Polish aristocrat Christine Granville duped the Gestapo and saved Allied lives. Her remarkable exploits make for a compulsive biography."
  • Daily Mail
    "...breathtaking account …inspiring and tragic…This book demands to be read in her honour."
  • The Cultural Pick
    "Mulley’s excellent telling of Granville’s real-life story that it is far more compelling, extraordinary and larger than life than any fiction could dare to be.... The Spy Who Loved is an extraordinary story exceptionally well told.... The Spy who Loved is thoroughly engaging, wonderfully considered, endlessly illuminating, and highly recommended. "
  • Salon.com
    "The most frank and comprehensive tribute yet to Christine…likely as substantial a biography as can be written about the woman who began life as Krystyna Skarbek — and it is indeed a thrilling account."
  • Publishers Weekly starred review
    "Mulley (The Woman Who Saved the Children) gives a remarkable, charismatic woman her due in this tantalizing biography."