C.C.’s comment “what about Carrie?” made me think but maybe one day she will be worth a biography although she is more likely to make a pre-emptive strike by writing a memoir about the red wine stains on her upholstery.
Sonia Purnell’s biography of Clementine Churchill (on order) did not launch her career. Her first book was Just Boris: A tale of Blond Ambition. Since then she has moved into territory occupied by Ben Macintyre. You may remember the formidable and feisty Virginia Cowles author of Looking for Trouble from posts passim. Sonia Purnell has chosen another American, Virginia Hall, as the subject of an enthralling biography: A Woman of No Importance – The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WW’s Most Dangerous Spy. A clunky title but no doubt that’s the fault of a cloth eared editor.
Remember Agent Zo and her frustration with the London Poles directing the Resistance in Warsaw and Eastern Europe? Virginia Hall, incidentally an American like Virginia Cowles and Sonia Purnell, shares her frustration about her SOE handlers in Baker Street. Dick Francis specialised in heroes with disabilities in his trite thrillers but even he might have baulked at a heroine with a wooden leg. Virginia Hall literally shot herself in the foot when snipe shooting in Turkey and lived with the painful and disagreeable consequences of her carelessness. However, she was not careless in her role as a spy.
Purnell’s biography is well researched and reads like a thriller. It also casts, for me, fresh light on the disastrous Dieppe raid of 1942. As I am only half way through I’m hoping for more revelations – not least about what becomes of Virginia, in a most dangerous position as she becomes increasingly vulnerable to discovery and execution, limping in Lyon.
