Britain's First WW2 Female Spy Commemorated

Another one long overdue.
"She was a glamorous countess and British spy whose extraordinary wartime heroics included skiing out of Nazi-occupied Poland with the first evidence of Operation Barbarossa – the Nazi plans to invade Soviet Russia.

Later in the war she played a role in the liberation of France as first contact between the French Resistance and Italian Partisans, and single-handedly secured the defection of a strategically important German garrison.

But the name and achievements of Krystyna Skarbek, the first and longest-serving female special agent in the second world war, are still little known. Now a bronze bust of her will stand in the Polish Hearth Club in London.

The unveiling on Tuesday evening has been organised by the writer Clare Mulley, who wrote Skarbek’s biography, The Spy Who Loved, published in 2013.

The new bust illuminates a remarkable life, one of tremendous valour but also tragedy, which ended with Skarbek’s murder in 1952.

“She was a remarkable woman, it is ludicrous that she is not better known,” said Mulley. “That is not to take anything from all the other women and men who served, all their stories are fantastic, but her story is incredible and she has just not been honoured as she should be.”

Skarbek, a Polish countess who would later use the name Christine Granville, was so incensed by the Nazi invasion of her native country that she demanded that the Secret Service take her on."
]Britain's first female second world war spy to get overdue recognition