Krystyna Skarbek a.k.a. Christine Granville: ‘Stories of Trust and Betrayal’ By Clare Mulley

Excerpt from Clare Mulley’s biography of Krystyna Skarbek, The Spy Who Loved: the secrets and lives of one of Britain’s bravest wartime heroines by Clare Mulley

Published by Pan Books, 2013, paperback

Christine Granville aka Krystyna Skarbek by Aniela Pawlikowska, oil on canvas, c.1946, Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum

In 1973, twenty-one years after Christine Granville’s tragic death, two of her lovers entered into a studiously polite, and short-lived, correspondence. The Polish Count Wladimir Ledóchowski thanked his compatriot and former fellow special agent, Andrzej Kowerski, for his ‘willingness to cooperate’ in a book about Christine. Ledóchowski wrote optimistically that he took Kowerski’s cautious promise of help ‘as a token of your trust’.¹ But there was little real trust between these old rivals, and the rest of the letter was set out in neat points, clarifying their agreed approval process for any manuscript on Christine.

Cover of Clare Mulley’s biography of Krystyna Skarbek, The Spy Who Loved: the secrets and lives of one of Britain’s bravest wartime heroines by Clare Mulley

Ledóchowski had suggested that he and Kowerski set up what he called a ‘Club of the Saved’, composed exclusively of those men whose lives had been saved by Christine, several of whom, he had added ‘with a twinkle in his eye’, had been saved in more ways than one.² By his tally there were six potential members who had ‘jumped… into Christine’s life, like parachuters into unknown territory’, including himself and Kowerski representing Poland, three British agents including the decorated hero Francis Cammaerts, and a French officer.³ Ledóchowski conceded that there was little hope of weaving their experiences into a ‘logical whole’ as, he wrote, ‘I doubt you should look to logic to explain any girl, particularly one like Christine’.⁴ But perhaps, from their collective memories, Christine might emerge ‘not as a performer of illustrious feats’ but, he hoped, ‘just as a person’.⁵

Ledóchowski was now surprised to learn that there was already a Christine-focused gentlemen’s club in place, with a slightly different remit, and that membership had not been extended to him. Kowerski and four wartime friends, Cammaerts, John Roper, Patrick Howarth and Michael ‘Lis’ Gradowski, had set up the ‘Panel to Protect the Memory of Christine Granville’, soon after her death in 1952.⁶ Ledóchowski felt that his life had been irreconcilably intertwined with Christine’s, but he had always known that he was not the only person to claim a special relationship with her, or even the first to hope to write about her. Kowerski’s ‘panel’ had come together when the newspapers were having a field day with stories about the Polish beauty queen who had served as a British special agent. ‘We, her friends, did not want her to become a press sensation’ Cammaerts later explained, ‘we tried to defend her reputation’.⁷ Yet as Ledóchowski’s son later wrote, ‘the death of heroes is not usually followed by panels to protect their memories and stop books about them’.⁸ Several articles and biographies were quashed but, within months, another of Christine’s former friends and colleagues, Bill Stanley Moss, whose daughter had been named in Christine’s honour, had serialised her life for the Picture Post, under the title ‘Christine the Brave’.⁹

Moss, who had already published an account of one of his own wartime SOE missions in the book Ill Met By Moonlight, recognised a good story and was planning a full biography and screenplay for a biopic to star Winston Churchill’s actress daughter, Sarah.¹⁰ Asked why she had chosen the role, Churchill replied it was because Christine was her father’s favourite spy, further stoking the growing Christine legend.¹¹ During his research in 1953, the year after Christine died, Moss had got in touch with Ledóchowski. ‘It is probably impossible,’ Ledóchowski had written back, ‘if Christine’s remarkable character is to be properly depicted, to picture her as an angel of virtue, to desexualise her. On the other hand this rather embarrassing for Andrew situation can, in my opinion, not be reflected in your book’.¹² Moss never resolved the issues and the project was shelved.

Twenty years later Ledóchowski decided to pick up the mantle and was seeking Kowerski’s support for his own biographical project. The last clause in the agreement between them specified that ‘in case of condemnation of the manuscript’, the book was not to be published.¹³ Although Moss’s widow, Christine’s friend, Zofia Tarnowska-Moss, felt that Ledóchowski’s manuscript was written ‘very tenderly’, she was not in the club, and four of the five members of Kowerski’s all-male panel rejected the draft out of hand.¹⁴ ‘So outraged’ were they, that they even appointed a lawyer ready to start a lawsuit.¹⁵ Ledóchowski honoured his word, however, and his manuscript was never completed or published.

Key Sources

Interviews and private correspondence:

Christine Isabelle Cole, daughter of Zofia Tarnowska and Bill Stanley Moss (May 2011)
Nicholas Gibbs, historian (April 2011)

Archives:

Christine Isabelle Cole/Bill Stanley Moss private papers, intended for the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum:
– Correspondence relating to Christine Granville
Maria Pienkowska private papers, Warsaw:
– Correspondence between Andrzej Kowerski and Wladimir Ledóchowski (1973), and Barbara Pienkowska (c.1974)

Press:

Picture Post, [Bill] Stanley Moss, ‘Christine the Brave’ (13.9.1952 – 4.10.1952)

Film/TV:

Mieczystawa Wazacz (producer), No Ordinary Countess (2005)

Published and unpublished memoirs, recollections and records:

Wladimir Ledóchowski, Christine Skarbek-Granville: A Biographical Story, draft manuscript (no date)
Kurt D Singer, Spies and Traitors (1953)

Secondary sources:

Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Who was she? Christine and my father’s unpublished book’ draft manuscript (2008)
Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Christine Granville and my father’s unpublished book’, draft manuscript (2008)

Endnotes

Maria Pienkowska papers, Andrzej Kowerski/Wladimir Ledóchowski correspondence (1973)
Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Christine Granville and my father’s unpublished book’ (2008); also Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Who was she? Christine and my father’s unpublished book’ (2008) p.6
Wladimir Ledóchowski, Christine Skarbek-Granville: A Biographical Story, draft manuscript, pp.5-6
Wladimir Ledóchowski, Christine Skarbek-Granville: A Biographical Story, draft manuscript, p.6
Wladimir Ledóchowski, Christine Skarbek-Granville: A Biographical Story, draft manuscript, p.5
Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Christine Granville and my father’s unpublished book’ (2008) p.1
Mieczyslawa Wazacz, Tydzien Polski, (Polish Week), (26.02.2005)
Jan Ledóchowski, ‘Christine Granville and my father’s unpublished book’ (2008) p.22
Picture Post, [Bill] Stanley Moss, ‘Christine the Brave’ (13.9.1952 – 4.10.1952)
Bill Stanley Moss’s book Ill Met By Moonlight was published in 1950. The Pinewood Studio film based on it, starring Dirk Bogarde, was released in 1957. Odette, a biopic of Odette Sansom had been released in 1950, and Carve Her Name with Pride, based on the RJ Minney book of the same title about Violette Szabo, came out in 1958.
Zofia Tarnowska, Bill Stanley Moss’s wife and a good friend of Christine’s, told this story in 2001. As no direct pronouncements by Churchill on Christine are known, this seems to be the source of the much-disputed line that Christine was Churchill’s ‘favourite spy’. However Kurt D Singer, who claimed he knew Christine, also recorded that ‘Winston Churchill personally praised her and thanked her’, See Kurt D Singer, Spies and Traitors (1953) p.201
Cole/Moss papers: Wladimir Ledochowski letter to Bill Stanley Moss (13.05.1953)
Maria Pienkowska papers, Andrzej Kowerski/Wladimir Ledóchowski correspondence (1973)
Mieczyslawa Wazacz, (Producer) No Ordinary Countess, TV documentary
Maria Pienkowska papers: Andrzej Kowerski-Kennedy/Barbara Pienkowska correspondence (24.01.c.1974)