Spy Princess

Spy Princess is a biography of Noor Inayat Khan, a descendant of Tipu Sultan, and the first woman radio operator to be infiltrated into occupied France during the Second World War.^[1] It is authored by Shrabani Basu, who includes details collected from interviews with Khan's friends and relatives including her brothers Hidayat and Vilayat.^[1] It includes extracts from Madeleine, a biography of Khan by her friend Jean Overton Fuller, and information from Khan's formerly secret Special Operations Executive (SOE) files, released in 2003.^[1]

Khan was born in Moscow to an Indian father, Inayat Khan, and an American mother, Ora Ray Baker. Her father was a Sufi preacher and she was brought up in a house filled with music and meditation. Her book Twenty Jataka Tales was published in 1939 in the UK. In the foreword, Michael Foot writes that the book answers some questions as to why "an innocent like this" ended up in occupied France "at all".^[2] She was killed by the Nazis at Dachau concentration camp on 13 September 1944,^[3] and was posthumously awarded at first the Croix de Guerre by France and later the George Cross by Britain.^[1] According to Basu in Spy Princess, Khan found it difficult to see any country invaded.^[4]

Spy Princess was first published by Sutton Publishing (now The History Press) in 2006^[5][6] and launched in London by the Indian High Commissioner Kamalesh Sharma at an event attended by Ian Jack and Sir Gulam Noon.^[7] A second edition was published by The History Press in 2008, with subsequent reprints in 2010, 2016, 2019 and 2020.^[2]

The book has been translated into Marathi, published by Mehata Pablisinga Hausa.^[8] Other publishers include the Lotus Collection imprint of Roli Books,^[7][9] Omega Publications in the US in 2006, with a preface by Khan's nephew Zia Inayat Khan,^[10][11] and a large print version in 2007, published by W. F. Howes.^[12]

The 2020 reprint of the second edition has 10 chapters, preceded by a map of the Prospect circuits in France, a foreword by M. R. D. Foot, acknowledgements and an introduction.^[2] In the book, Basu acknowledges Sutton Publishing for first commissioning and publishing it.^[2] Following a section titled 'Aftermath' are four appendices, which list the French Resistance circuits, the names of people who helped Khan, a chronology of events and a list of Indians awarded the Victoria Cross and the George Cross between 1939 and 1945.^[2] There are citations to references listed in the notes section, and a bibliography and an index.^[2] It has 286 pages, in addition to eight pages of photographs.^[2] There are no footnotes.^[2]

After a prologue describing Khan's final journey to Dachau, early chapters cover her ancestry and early life in Moscow, London and Paris. The book dispels some previously held accounts of Khan, including dismissing that she was recruited during a tiger-hunt in India, that her father was associated with Rasputin and recruited by him, and that she was born in the Kremlin, and states that many former romanticised accounts were nothing less than "pure fantasy".^[2]

In 1940, just before Paris was occupied, she escaped with her family to the UK and volunteered for the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). A fluent French speaker and a trained radio operator, she was soon recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret British organisation. In June 1943, code-named Nora Baker, she became the first woman radio operator to be infiltrated into occupied France. Her brief was to assist the Prosper circuit and the French Resistance. Within a week, she was the only radio operator left in Paris, as members of her network fell to the Gestapo, mostly due to betrayal by double agents. Determined to maintain communications between the Resistance and the SOE, she declined the opportunity to return to London, and continued to transmit messages, avoiding being captured while repeatedly changing her looks and locations. Her work allowed safe passage of several SOE members, in addition to supplies of money and ammunition to the French Resistance.

She was however betrayed and caught by the Gestapo, and was sent at first to 84 Avenue Foch and then ultimately Dachau after 10-months of imprisonment and torture, but she revealed nothing. Despite sending the appropriate warning code that should have alerted the SOE to her capture, the SOE did not believe her and the Germans continued to use her transmitter to send messages to London, leading to the deaths of several SOE members. In addition, she had misunderstood her instruction in filing her messages, resulting in her meticulously kept notebook falling into the hands of the Gestapo.

Further details of Khan's execution are detailed near the end, before discussing the search for information on her time in capture and circumstances of death.

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  Inayat Khan family in Paris before 1926^[2]
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  Khan's mother Amina Begum^[2]
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  Khan in uniform^[2]

The book featured in the BBC's Woman's Hour in early 2006.^[13] Later in the year it was reviewed in The Tribune by Khushwant Singh who wrote that the book "fills in gaps left in the earlier versions. It makes compelling reading. It is something Bollywood could take up as profit-making challenge".^[14] Boyd Tonkin, in The Independent, wrote that Khan "ought to be as popular a heroine in British schools as Florence Nightingale once was" and described the book as a "moving and scrupulous biography" that should be taught in British schools.^[15] In 2018, the book was referenced in an obituary on Khan in the New York Times, then included in an attempt to fill in missing female obituaries from the past.^[16]

As a result of her work on the book, Basu helped form the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust, and to erect a bust of Khan, which was unveiled in 2012 at Gordon Square.^[17] In 2021, it was announced that the book would be adapted into a television series.^[18]

• Formats and Editions of Spy Princess : The Life of Noor Inayat Khan. [WorldCat.org]. OCLC 1261365746 – via www.worldcat.org.
• Spy Princess, interview with author (2008) on YouTube