Clare Mulley is an award-winning popular historian, author and broadcaster, primarily focused on female experience during the Second World War.
Clare is currently writing Agent Zo: Woman on a Mission, a biography of the only woman in the Polish special forces, the ‘Silent Unseen’, who were trained in country houses across Britain. To be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2024. Previous books include the award-winning The Woman Who Saved the Children, on Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children; The Spy Who Loved about the remarkable Polish-born British special agent Krystyna Skarbek aka Christine Granville; and The Women Who Flew for Hitler, which tells the story of Nazi Germany’s only two female test pilots, one of whom tried to save Hitler’s life, while the other tried to kill him. Clare’s books are widely translated, and all are under option for film or TV.
Clare writes for various papers and magazines, reviews for the Spectator and TLS among other publications, and has twice been chair of the judges for the Historical Writers Association non-fiction prize.
Recent TV includes several history series for Channel 5, More 4, Sky, and the History Channel, as well as two series of the BBC’s Rise of the Nazis. Also guest spots on the BBC’s Newsnight, Songs of Praise, D-Day 70 coverage, BBC World News, Sky News, ITV News etc. A regular on radio and podcasts, Clare has contributed to the BBC R4’s Today Programme, Woman’s Hour and PM, as well as Times Radio and many others. She is a favourite on Dan Snow’s History Hit, James Holland and Al Murray’s We Have Ways of Making You Talk and many other pods.
A popular public speaker, Clare has given a TEDx talk at Stormont, and spoken at the Houses of Parliament, Royal Albert Hall, Imperial War Museum, National Army Museum and British Library, as well as many festivals, military intelligence colleges, schools, universities, private members clubs, bookshops and airfields!
Clare and is a recipient of the Bene Merito cultural honour of the Republic of Poland, and the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize.
The Women Who Flew for Hitler tells the story of Nazi Germany’s only female test pilots, one of whom tried to save Hitler, the other to kill him. Hanna Reitsch flew giant gliders, rocket planes and even a manned prototype cruise missile – the V1 flying bomb. A fanatical Nazi, in the last days of the war she tried to rescue Hitler from the bunker. Her nemesis, Melitta von Stauffenberg, engineer and test pilot for the Stuka dive bombers, had Jewish ancestry. In July 1944 she supported the famous bomb plot to kill Hitler… Not surprisingly, although they did not know all of each other’s secrets, the two women hated each other. Optioned for TV.
The Spy Who Loved brings to life Polish-born, part Jewish, Countess Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to serve Britain as a special agent in the Second World War. In 1941, the vital intelligence she smuggled across borders prompted Churchill to call her his ‘favourite spy’. But it was her service in occupied-France, in 1944, that make her legendary, including single-handedly securing the defection of a strategic German garrison, and saving the lives of many of her male colleagues. The Spy Who Loved, for which Clare was decorated with Poland’s national honour, the Bene Merito, has been optioned for film.
The Woman Who Saved the Children Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square for campaigning to help the starving children of Britain’s former enemies. In 1919, few in London were sympathetic. Yet within weeks the audacious Jebb had secured the first donation to her ‘Save the Children’ fund from the public prosecutor at her trial, and another from the British PM’s wife. Never fond of individual children, ‘the little wretches’ as she once famously called them, Jebb was an unconventional woman, driven by passion and compassion. The Woman Who Saved the Children won the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize, and all author royalties are donated to Save the Children. Under option for film.
Clare Mulley 