Originally recruited after escaping the Nazis and helping a British airman return to England, she worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) assessing and testing the security awareness of trainee secret agents.

[5] Raised in Latvia, she was educated at a German school in Riga before moving to Paris, France in 1940.

[5] Meanwhile her mother and sister had fled to Sweden from Soviet-occupied Latvia, where their property had been confiscated by the Russians.

The pilot, flight lieutenant Simpson, suspected Chilver was a foreign spy, as she seemed too well fed when they met.

[5] In 1942, Chilver joined the SOE, and was given the task of assessing and testing the security awareness of trainee agents while they were on 96-hour training missions in the UK.