As an SOE agent under the codename Madeleine she became the first female wireless operator to be sent from the UK into occupied France to aid the French Resistance during the Second World War.

[4] Her father, Inayat Khan, was born in Baroda, Bombay Presidency, and came from a family of Indian Muslims[4] with hereditary nobles and classical musicians among both sides of his ancestors.

Her mother, Pirani Ameena Begum (born Ora Ray Baker), was an American[2][4] from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who had met Inayat Khan during his travels in the United States.

[notes 2][11] Although Noor was deeply influenced by pacifist ideals, she and her brother Vilayat decided they wanted to help defeat Nazi tyranny: "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war.

[15] From Aylesbury, Noor went on to Beaulieu, where the security training was capped with a practice mission – in the case of wireless operators, to find a place in a strange city from which they could transmit back to their instructors without being detected by an agent unknown to them who would be shadowing them.

[14] The ultimate training exercise was the mock Gestapo interrogation, intended to give agents a taste of what might be in store for them if they were captured, and some practice in maintaining their cover story.

"[16][check quotation syntax] Her final report[notes 3] read: "Not overburdened with brains but has worked hard and shown keenness, apart from some dislike of the security side of the course.

[20] One instructor wrote that "she confesses that she would not like to have to do anything 'two faced'", while another said she was "very feminine in character, very eager to please, very ready to adapt herself to the mood of the company; the one of the conversation, capable of strong attachments, kind hearted, emotional, imaginative.

[20] Further, Vera Atkins (the intelligence officer for F Section) insisted Noor's commitment was unquestioned, as another training report had readily confirmed: "She felt she had come to a dead end in the WAAF, and was longing to do something more active in the prosecution of the war, something that would demand more sacrifice."

So when Suttill's request first came, Vera saw Noor as a natural choice, and although her final training in field security and encoding had to be cut short, she judged her ready to go.

[22] Hiding themselves as best they could, with aerials strung up in attics or disguised as washing lines, they tapped out Morse on the key of transmitters, and would often wait alone for hours for a reply saying the messages had been received.

The normal procedure, as Noor knew, was that when an agent went to the field, Vera would send out a periodic "good news" letters to the family, letting them know the person concerned was well.

Those who were not dropped into France by parachute (as were agents like Andrée Borrel and Lise de Baissac) were flown in on Lysanders, a light monowing transport aircraft designed to land on short and rough fields.

Once on the ground Noor would make contact with the Prosper circuit organizer, Francis Suttill, and take on her new persona as a children's nurse, "Jeanne-Marie Renier", using fake papers in that name.

[30] Regardless of her perceived shortcomings, Noor's fluent French and her competency in wireless operation – coupled with a shortage of experienced agents – made her a desirable candidate for service in Nazi-occupied France.

Hans Kieffer, the former head of the SD in Paris, testified after the war that she did not give the Gestapo a single piece of information, but lied consistently.

[19] However, other sources indicate that Noor chatted amiably with an out-of-uniform Alsatian interrogator, and provided personal details which enabled the SD to answer random checks in the form of questions about her childhood and family.

He would later claim to have been working for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6), without the knowledge of SOE, as part of a complex deception plan in the run-up to D-Day.

[40] Sonya Olschanezky ('Tania'), a locally recruited SOE agent, had learnt of Noor's arrest and sent a message to London through her fiancé, Jacques Weil, telling Baker Street of her capture and warning HQ to suspect any transmissions from "Madeleine".

As a result, German transmissions from Noor's radio continued to be treated as genuine, leading to the unnecessary deaths of SOE agents, including Olschanezky herself, who was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp on 6 July 1944.

[41] On 25 November 1943, Noor escaped from the SD Headquarters, along with fellow SOE agent John Renshaw Starr and resistance leader Léon Faye, but was recaptured in the vicinity.

After refusing to sign a declaration renouncing future escape attempts, Noor was taken to Germany on 27 November 1943 "for safe custody" and imprisoned at Pforzheim in solitary confinement as a "Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog": condemned to "Disappearance without Trace") prisoner, in complete secrecy.

However, by scratching messages on the base of her mess cup, Noor was able to inform another inmate of her identity, giving the name of Nora Baker and the London address of her mother's house.

[43][1] On 12 September 1944, Noor Inayat Khan was abruptly transferred to the Dachau concentration camp along with her fellow agents Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment and Eliane Plewman.

[1] Because she was still considered "missing" in 1946, she could not be awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire,[54] but her commission as Assistant Section Officer was gazetted in June (with effect from 5 July 1944),[55] and she was Mentioned in Despatches in October 1946.

However, she refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, even though she had been given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not want to leave her French comrades without communications and she also hoped to rebuild her group.

On her arrival, she was taken to the crematorium and shot.Assistant Section Officer INAYAT-KHAN displayed the most conspicuous courage, both moral and physical over a period of more than 12 months.On 25 February 2019, it was announced Noor Inayat Khan would be honoured with a blue plaque at her wartime London home at 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury – the house she left on her final and fatal mission and the address she had etched into her bowl while in prison so she could be identified.

[63] In 2022, Almanya Narula, a distinguished actor, writer, and fight choreographer, captivated audiences with her original one-woman solo show, Noor Inayat Khan: The Forgotten Spy, at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, California.

The following deviations from facts have been noted: Khan is the basis for Anna Sidiqui in Catalyst Theatre's all-female musical The Invisible: Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

[74][75] In September 2012, producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to the biography Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu.