[9][10] Skarbek's most famous exploit was securing the release of SOE agents Francis Cammaerts and Xan Fielding from a German prison hours before they were to be executed.

[15] Marrying Stefania in late December 1899, Jerzy Skarbek used his wife's dowry (her father was a banker) to pay his debts and continue his lavish lifestyle.

Krystyna, not wishing to be a burden to her mother, worked at a Fiat car dealership, but soon became ill from automobile fumes and had to give up the job.

"[28] Upon the outbreak of World War II, the couple sailed for London, arriving 6 October 1939, where Skarbek sought to offer her services in the struggle against the common enemy.

The British authorities showed little interest but were eventually convinced by her acquaintances, including journalist Frederick Augustus Voigt, who introduced her to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

[36] In Hungary, Skarbek encountered Andrzej Kowerski (1912–1988), now a Polish army officer, who later used the British nom de guerre "Andrew Kennedy".

Kowerski, who had lost part of his leg in a pre-war hunting accident, was now exfiltrating Polish and other Allied military personnel and collecting intelligence.

Kowerski (Kennedy)'s cousin, Ludwik Popiel, managed to smuggle out a unique Polish anti-tank rifle, model 35, with the stock and barrel sawn off for easier transport.

Apparently no fireworks ensued when he met Kowerski, and they persuaded him to go to Budapest to take over Skarbek's previous role as the contact point for the British with the Polish resistance.

[42] Skarbek and Kowerski "had driven fairly blithely across hundreds of miles of Nazi-sympathizing territory, often carrying incriminating letters and sometimes microfilm and just weeks or at times days ahead of the Nazi advance.

[c] Another source of suspicion was the ease with which she had obtained transit visas through French-mandated Syria and Lebanon from the pro-Vichy French consul in Istanbul.

Major Wilkinson informs me that Kowerski had had instructions from our officials not to report to General Kopański, as he was engaged […] on work of a secret nature which necessitated his remaining apart.

A week after the dismissal of Skarbek and Kowerski, on 22 June 1941 Germany began its Operation Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union, predicted by the intelligence the couple had passed along to the British from the Musketeers.

AMF Section served three purposes: it was simpler and safer to run the resupply operations from Allied North Africa than from London, across German-occupied France; the South of France was to be liberated by separate Allied landings there (Operation Dragoon), so SOE units in the area needed be supplied by their headquarters in Algiers, not by London; and AMF Section tapped into the skills of the French living in North Africa.

On the morning of 14 July came a daylight drop of light arms and supplies from 72 American B-17s, the largest single-day airdrop to the maquis during World War II.

Encouraged by a speech from the head of the provisional government, Charles de Gaulle, (but discouraged by Cammaerts who opposed large-scale guerrilla operations and pleaded unsuccessfully for artillery and anti-tank weapons for the maquis), a full-scale rebellion against the German occupiers broke out.

She made contact with two prominent leaders of the French Resistance, Gilbert Galletti and Paul Hérault (soon to be killed by the Germans), and greeted the arrival of an "Operation Toplink" team which included her friends John Roper, Paddy O'Regan, and Harvard Gunn.

Skarbek rushed back from the Col de Larche, halting briefly along the way to meet a recently arrived 10-man allied military mission.

[65] Skarbek managed to meet with Captain Albert Schenck, an Alsatian who acted as liaison officer between the local French prefecture and the Gestapo.

She introduced herself as Cammaerts' wife and a niece of British General Bernard Montgomery and threatened Schenck with terrible retribution if harm came to the prisoners.

Increasingly alarmed by the thought of what might befall him when the Allies and the Resistance decided to avenge the many murders he had committed, Waem struck the butt end of his revolver on the table and said, 'If I do get them out of prison, what will you do to protect me?

Xan Fielding, whom she had saved from execution by the Gestapo, wrote in his 1954 book, Hide and Seek, dedicated "To the memory of Christine Granville": After the physical hardship and mental strain she had suffered for six years in our service, she needed, probably more than any other agent we had employed, security for life.

[…] Yet a few weeks after the armistice she was dismissed with a month's salary and left in Cairo to fend for herself... though she was too proud to ask for any other assistance, she did apply for the protection of a British passport; for ever since the Anglo-American betrayal of her country at Yalta she had been virtually stateless.

Meanwhile, abandoning all hope of security, she embarked on a life of uncertain travel, as though anxious to reproduce in peace time the hazards she had known during the war...[81] She was ultimately naturalised in December 1946[10] after returning to Britain and threatening to refuse her George Medal and OBE.

[39][84] Her assailant was Dennis Muldowney, the obsessed man who had worked with her as a steward on Ruahine and was at the time of her murder a Reform Club porter.

[86] Following Granville's death, Andrzej Kowerski (Andrew Kennedy) led a group of men, especially Cammaerts, Roper, and Patrick Howarth,[87] dedicated to ensuring that her name not be "sullied" and successfully prevented publication in newspapers and books of "rubbish" about her, which biographer Madeleine Masson interpreted as meaning stories of her sex life.

[88] In 1971, the Shellbourne Hotel was bought by a Polish group; in a storeroom, they found Skarbek's trunk, containing her clothes, papers, and SOE issue dagger.

In 1999, Polish writer Maria Nurowska published a novel, Miłośnica (The Lover) – an account of a fictional female journalist's attempt to probe Skarbek's story.

[98] Author William F. Nolan claimed that Ian Fleming, in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), modelled Vesper Lynd on Christine Granville.

[99] Skarbek biographer Clare Mulley, however, wrote that, "if Christine was immortalised as the carelessly beautiful double agent Vesper Lynd, Fleming is more likely to have been inspired by the stories he heard than the woman in person.... [H]e never claimed to have met her, even in passing.