As my readers may know, Grown Men Cry Out at Night is a novel that is based upon true events. We have already learned about the Valentin Bunker, which plays a prominent role in the book. I also feel that readers should know that one of the characters of my book, Ludmilla Haas, is based on a person who actually lived named Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek.
Skarbek was born in Warsaw to an aristocratic family, and while raised as a Roman Catholic, she had Jewish ancestry. She was Great Britain’s first female agent to serve in the field. She was serving as an agent before Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) formally accepted women into its ranks. She also had the distinction of being the longest-serving among all of Britain’s women wartime agents. She served from 1940 through the end of the war in 1945. Her longevity is particularly remarkable given the life expectancy of field agents was estimated to be approximately six weeks once they deployed to the field.
There are at least four biographies written about Skarbek should my readers wish to learn more about this remarkable woman. I consider The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, by Clare Mulley written in 2012 to be the best as I have read them all while researching my own book. I have found another brief, but very well written biography of her on The Heroine Collective. I hope you will take the time to read more about her. She is a woman whose name should be known by everyone.
I am not the first writer to base a character upon Skarbek. Ian Fleming based two characters on Skarbek; the first was Vesper Lynd in his 1953 novel, Casino Royal, and the second was Tatiana Romanova from 1957’s From Russia with Love.
While I certainly could have used Skarbek’s real name, I felt that anything I would write would pale in comparison to the life Skarbek actually lived and the feats she accomplished. So, in my novel, her spirit lives within the character of Ludmilla Haas and I hope Haas’s spirit lives up to Skarbek’s.