Krystyna Skarbek (Christine Granville)

Background

According to English Heritage she was born in Warsaw on 1 May 1908 as Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, the daughter of Count Jerzy Skarbek and Stefania Goldfeder, who came from a Jewish banking family. In November 1938 she married the diplomat Jerzy Giżycki.¹

Courier into occupied Poland

When Germany invaded Poland, the Giżyckis were in Africa and went to London. Skarbek put to British intelligence a plan to reach Poland through Hungary and – as English Heritage puts it – became the organisation’s first female spy.^1,4

From the winter of 1939–40 she crossed into Poland several times, carrying money, weapons and explosives in and bringing out intelligence and people escaping the country. The Polish Embassy in London mentions crossings of the snowbound border on skis.^1,4

In January 1941 she was arrested in Hungary together with Andrzej Kowerski. According to English Heritage she feigned tuberculosis, biting her tongue so that she coughed blood, and both were released. They were given British passports and new names – she took the name Christine Granville.¹

SOE in France, 1944

According to English Heritage she trained with SOE in Cairo as a wireless operator. On 7 July 1944 she was parachuted into southern France as courier to Francis Cammaerts, and in time became his second-in-command.¹

The description of her papers in the Imperial War Museums collections states that in 1944 she worked in the ‘Jockey’ circuit in south-eastern France and Italy, kept in contact with Poles conscripted into the German army, and secured the release of Cammaerts and two other agents who were facing execution.⁵

English Heritage adds that she posed before the Germans as a British agent announcing an imminent invasion and paid a bribe of 2 million francs.¹

After the war

The British catalogue of naturalisation records (HO 382/44) notes that she was awarded the George Medal and the OBE for her wartime activity; English Heritage also lists the French Croix de Guerre.^1,3

In 1945 she applied for British citizenship. The National Archives (document HS 9/612) explains that a former SOE agent would have been in danger in Soviet-dominated Poland, and naturalisation protected her from repatriation. Her final mission to Poland was cancelled.²

After the war she could not find stable work; from 1949 she lived in London at the Shelbourne Hotel, run by a Polish relief organisation, and worked among other things as a stewardess on a passenger ship.^1,4

On 15 June 1952 she was stabbed to death at the hotel by Dennis Muldowney, a man who had been stalking her. He was convicted and hanged; she was buried on 21 June at Kensal Green Cemetery. In 2020 English Heritage put up a blue plaque on the former hotel building.^1,4

Fact and legend

Many stories have grown up around her life. The Polish Embassy in London repeats that Winston Churchill called her his favourite spy, that she was the model for Vesper Lynd in Ian Fleming’s ‘Casino Royale’ and – following her biographer Clare Mulley – that she secured the defection of an entire German garrison in an Alpine pass. These claims do not appear in the archival documents we cite.^2,4,5