books

The Women Who Flew for Hitler tells the extraordinary story of the only two women to serve the Third Reich as test pilots. One was a fanatical Nazi. The other, who had Jewish heritage, was at the centre of the most famous plot against Hitler. The first woman to fly a helicopter, Hannah Reitsch later tested rocket planes and even a manned version of a prototype cruise missile – the V1 flying bomb or doodlebug. Committed to the Nazi cause, in the last days of the war she tried to rescue Hitler from the bunker. Hanna’s nemesis, Melitta von Stauffenberg, aeronautical engineer and test pilot for the Stuka dive bombers that were synonymous with the Blitzkrieg, secretly supported an attempt on Hitler’s life, yet despite her arrest her story did not end there… Optioned for TV.

The Spy Who Loved brings to life the Polish-born Countess Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, Britain’s first and longest serving female special agent of the Second World War. In 1941, the vital intelligence she smuggled across borders prompted Churchill to call her his favourite spy. She went on to make the first contact between the French resistance and Italian partisans, secured the defection on an entire German garrison in the Alps, and saved 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 100 years ago, Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square for campaigning to help the children of Britain’s former enemies. In 1919, few in London were sympathetic to her cause. Nevertheless, within weeks the audacious Jebb had secured the first donation to her ‘Save the Children’ fund from the public prosecutor at her trial. Never fond of individual children, ‘the little wretches’ as she once called them, Jebb was an unconventional woman, driven by passion, compassion and a pioneering humanitarianism. The Woman Who Saved the Children won the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize, and all author royalties are donated to Save the Children. Optioned for film.