Christina Granville—the nom de guerre of Krystyna Skarbek, the daughter of a shiftless Polish count and his Jewish heiress wife—was one of the most storied and decorated members of the British Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.) during the Second World War. As an S.O.E. agent, she carried out a number of daring missions across Europe, most famously the rescue of two British agents in France mere hours before they were scheduled to be executed by the Gestapo. Christina's war was an adventurous one, but her post-war life was bleak: unable to return to her beloved Poland, penniless, discriminated against in the U.K. because of her nationality, ethnicity, and gender, and often it seems unable to get out of her own way. She was ultimately murdered, still only in her mid-40s, by an obsessed co-worker.

Christina's is an interesting life, but not one that I think Clare Mulley fully does justice. There's no getting around the relative lack of sources—Christina doesn't seem to have been given much to writing or to reflection, and many papers about her were accidentally or deliberately destroyed—but even taking that into account I didn't feel as if Mulley ever got a proper handle on her subject. The portrait she provides of Christina is out of focus and sometimes at odds with itself (we're often told she's an introverted loner but often encounter her at parties and celebrations, and she had multiple relationships), and the structure isn't as good as it could be. I'm glad that Christina's story has been told, though, and that Mulley made a diligent attempt to separate fact from myth (it's unlikely, for instance, that Ian Fleming had an affair with her and used her as the model for Vesper Lynd). ( )

Very biographical - it was hard to get through. Skimmed most of the pages ( )

Fascinating story of SOE's longest serving woman agent, and recipient of the George Medal, the OBE and the Croix de Guerre.

Clare Mulley has turned up a little known tale of a woman who fought not only the Nazis but the 1940s prejudices against an independent minded woman.
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Winston Churchill's favorite spy, Christine Granville is the subject of this bio. World War II intrigue, love affairs, coded messages,and murder should have been a hoot to read. It wasn't. It was boring. The author seems to want to give a day by day account of Granville's life, including what she ate for lunch, without getting a reader excited about what must have been an astonishing life. Christine Granville does not come alive on these pages. Too bad. ( )

Christine Granville, born Krystyna Skarbek was the first woman working as a British spy during World War II. Her main objective was to help Poland, her native country, secure its independence. She served in Egypt, North Africa, and France (which she entered by parachute) and Poland (skiing across mountains) and not only provided important information to the Allies, but also saved Allied forces both as individuals and by supplying vital information. In one spectacular case, she rescued three agents an hour before they were to be executed.
For various reasons, she spent a great deal of time trying to convince the allies that a woman, especially herself, was capable of doing the dangerous work. Even her success (she later was awarded the George Medal, the OBE, and the Croix de Guerre), did not help her get assignments either during or after the war. The British government treated her abominably.
The first half of the book was tedious and, often, boring. It tells about her youth, family, and personal relationships. The second half, which covers her spy work, was much more interesting as it relayed the stories of her sorties, her life after the war, and her tragic death.
The book has maps of Poland before, during and after the war and tells how and why it changed. It also details much of what was happening in and to Poland. While she does mention some of the murder of the Jews in Poland, including her mother and other members of her family (her father was Christian and her mother, whose family was not religious, converted to Christianity before her marriage), when she refers to 6,000,000 Poles dying (one fifth of the total pre-war population), she does not mention that 3,000,000 of them were Jews, almost the entire Jewish population of the country.
Though there is a lot of information about her marriages and numerous affairs, that isn’t the basis of the title, THE SPY WHO LOVED. According to the author almost everyone Christine met, especially the men, fell in love with her. She was a loner and may have loved a few people but preferred her independence and freedom. She loved adventure, action, and the freedom to live as she desired.
Clare Mulley seems to be trying to write the definitive story of Christine’s life in THE SPY WHO LOVED. She had difficulty finding information and some of it was contradictory. At times, she includes several versions of a particular incident. She also provides too much information which I consider unnecessary. Most of the notes on the page tell about people who play a minor role in the story. E.g. she writes of the marriage problems of some friends, noting “the deaths in infancy of their two sons.” In a note at the bottom of the page she writes, “Both children died of natural causes, the eldest aged two, on the birthday of his younger brother.” .
I’m glad I read the book but should have started in the middle. ( )