Pencil sketch of an anti Nazi agent SOE by Dr K Prabhakar Rao

CHRISTINE GRANVILLE

Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, OBE, GM, Croix de guerre (Polish pronunciation: [krɨˈstɨna ˈskarbɛk]; 1 May 1908 – 15 June 1952), also known as Christine Granville,  was a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. She became celebrated especially for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France.

She became a British agent months before the SOE was founded in July 1940 and was one of the longest-serving of all Britain's wartime women agents. Her resourcefulness and success have been credited with influencing the organisation's policy of recruiting increasing numbers of women.  In 1941 she began using the nom de guerreChristine Granville, a name which she legally adopted upon naturalisation as a British subject in December 1946. 

Christine Granville was stabbed to death in the Shelbourne Hotel, Earls Court, in London, on 15 June 1952. She had begun work as a liner stewardess some six weeks earlier with the Union-Castle Line and had booked into the hotel on 14 June, having returned from a working voyage out of Durban, South Africa, on Winchester Castle. Her body was identified by her cousin, Andrzej Skarbek. When her death was recorded at the Royal Borough of Kensington's register office, her age was given as 37; over the course of her life she lost seven years.   She was awarded George Medal.  Several years after the Digne incident, in London, she told another Pole and fellow World War II veteran that, during her negotiations with the Gestapo, she had been unaware of any danger to herself. Only after she and her comrades had made good their escape did it hit home: "What have I done! They could have shot me as well 

For her work in conjunction with the British authorities, in May 1947 she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE),  an award normally associated with officers of the equivalent military rank of lieutenant-colonel, and a level above the most usual award of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) given to other women agents of SOE.

French recognition of Skarbek's contribution to the liberation of France came with the award of the Croix de Guerre.^[ 

Her assailant was Dennis George Muldowney, an obsessed Reform Club porter and former merchant marine steward whose advances she had previously rejected. After being convicted of her murder, Muldowney was hanged at HMP Pentonville on 30 September 1952.