Secret of the RAF's spy princess

08 February 2011
She was young, beautiful, talented and brave - and the last word she spoke before she
was executed at Dachau concentration camp was ‘Liberté’.
A member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, Noo r Inayat Khan was recruited into
the Special Operations Executive and was the first female radio operator sent into
France in 1943 - when it was said to be the most dangerous posting in the country.
Now a campaign has been launched to honour the WWII heroine with a memorial near
her home in London - it will be the first memorial in the UK erected to a Muslim or an
Asian woman. The £100,000 appeal is being led by Noor’s biographer Shrabani Basu,
author of Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan and backed by a group of MPs
and prominent UK Asians including film director Gurinder Chadha, pressure group
director Shami Chalkrabati, Labour MP Valerie Vaz and Glenda Jackson.
Shrabani, founder of the Noor Inayat Khan Trust, said: “The memorial will be in Gordon
Square, it’s wonderful that it will be near where she lived.
“As a secret agent she lived nearby on 4 Taviton Street and would often spend her
off days reading on one of the benches in the square.”
Born in Moscow in 1914 to an Indian father and an American mother, Noor was a
direct descendant of Tipu Sultan, the notorious 18th-century ‘Tiger of Mysore’ who
refused to submit to British rule and died in battle in 1799.
Noor grew up in Paris and became a writer - she published children’s stories and a collection of traditional Indian tales. When war broke out she and her brother, Vilayat, decided to come to London to dedicate themselves to the cause against the Nazis.
Shrabani said: “She was a deeply spiritual person… in principle she believed she had to resist Nazism, she wanted to be in the front-line.”
A fluent French speaker, Noor joined the SOE, with the codename Madeleine
, in June 1943. In a letter to her SOE boss, accepting the post, she writes that
she has ‘grown attached’ to the RAF and wants to remain in the Service.
She ran a cell of spies across the French capital single-handed, until she was
betrayed and captured.
“When her circuit collapsed around her, it was so dangerous London called
her back but she refused,” Shrabani explained. “She survived for three more
months, doing the work of six radio operators.”
It is believed she was betrayed by a Frenchwoman, said to be the jealous
girlfriend of one of her resistance colleagues, or by the sister of a comrade.
Noor was taken to the Gestapo’s Paris HQ and interrogated but she revealed nothing. In November 1943 she was sent to Pforzheim prison in Germany, where she was kept in solitary confinement.
Shrabanu said: “In the end they knew her only as Nora Baker. She was kept isolated for 10 months, chained and shackled - she could not feed herself nor clean herself. She kept her spirit up right to the end.”
On September 12, 1944, she was taken to Dachau concentration camp and executed the next day - she was just 30.
Noor was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and the George Cross in 1949 (one of only three female wartime recipients - the others were Odette Hallows and Violette Szabo). Her courage and sacrifice have long been revered in France where there are two memorials to her and a ceremony on Bastille Day honouring her as a heroine of the French Resistance.
Artist Karen Newman has been commissioned to create a bronze sculpture of Noor, which it is hoped will be unveiled in September 2012.
Oscar-winning writer Judy Morris (Happy Feet and Babe, Pig In The City) is writing the screenplay of Spy Princess.
To donate to the campaign for Noor’s memorial go to: www.noormemorial.org.