KRYSTYNA SKARBEK: RE-VIEWING BRITAIN'S LEGENDARY POLISH AGENT Author(s): CHRISTOPHER KASPAREK Source: The Polish Review , 2004, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2004), pp. 945-953 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25779483 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Illinois Press and Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Polish Review This content downloaded from 95.183.180.42 on Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:46:54 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Polish Review, Vol. XLIX, No. 3, 2004:945-953 ? 2004 The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America CHRISTOPHER KASPAREK KRYSTYNA SKARBEK: RE-VIEWING BRITAIN'S LEGENDARY POLISH AGENT Poland's Krystyna Skarbek (1915-52), also known as Christine Granville, was, according to author Marcus Binney, "the longest-serving and most capable of all SOE's women agents" in World War II. (She actually became a British agent months before the Special Operations Executive was founded in July 1940.) Binney credits Skarbek's resourcefulness and success with influencing the espionage-and-subversion organization's policy of recruiting increasing numbers of women.1 I first heard substantial accounts of Skarbek in the latter 1990s, from my father, Jozef Kasparek (1915-2002).