Clare Mulley was born in 1969 in Luton, England, to Gill and Derek Mulley, "who watched the sky turn red over London during the Blitz, and have reached out for better international relations ever since."[1] She studied history and politics at the University of Sheffield.[2] In 2006 she received a master's degree in social and cultural history, with distinction, from the University of London.[3] Her dissertation was on Affection or Affectation: The Role and Rhetoric of Maternalism in the Development of Women's Social Action in Victorian Britain.[4]
She is a regular contributor to TV history series for the BBC, Channel 5, Channel 4, and the History Channel; and contributes to Newsnight, Songs of Praise, news programs, and radio programs including Today, Woman's Hour, Great Lives, and PM.
Mulley writes and reviews nonfiction for The Spectator, BBC History magazine, The Telegraph, and other periodicals. She has served as chair of the judges for the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown, in 2017 and 2021.
Private life
Clare Mulley lives in Essex, England, with her husband, the artist Ian Wolter, their three daughters, and a lurcher dog.[5]
In 1919 Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in London's Trafalgar Square for distributing humanitarian leaflets, and few in England were sympathetic to a woman hoping to help the children of Britain's World War I enemies. Nevertheless, within weeks Jebb secured the first donation to her "Save the Children" fund, from the public prosecutor at her trial. Five years later she drafted the pioneering statement of children's human rights that has since evolved into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most universally accepted human-rights instrument in history. Yet she was never particularly fond of individual children, "the little wretches" as she once called them.
When the book was published in 2009, then-UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it a "truly brilliant book".[7] Reportedly he had read it while on holiday and was moved to offer the unsolicited review.[7]
The book has been translated into Korean and Spanish.
The Spy Who Loved
In 2012 Macmillan published Mulley's biography, The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II.[8]
Winston Churchill is reputed to have called her his favourite spy. Part-Jewish, Polish-born Countess Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, was Britain's first and longest-serving female special agent of the Second World War. Arrested by the enemy, Skarbek used guile to save not only her own life, but the lives of male colleagues. It was especially her service behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France that made her legendary. She made the first contact between the French resistance and the Italian partisans on opposite sides of the Alps in preparation for Allied invasion in the south, and secured the defection of a German garrison on a strategic pass in the mountains. She was awarded the OBE, the George Medal, and the French Croix de Guerre. Her tragic early death made the papers around the world, yet much of her story was kept hidden.
The book received excellent reviews in the British, American, Canadian, and Polish press.[8][9][10][11]
The Spy Who Loved has been published in Britain, the U.S., Poland, Hungary, Russia, China and Italy.
In 2013 Mulley was awarded the Bene Merito honorary distinction by Poland's foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski.
In September 2020, after a six-year campaign, Mulley unveiled an English Heritageblue plaque commemorating Krystyna Skarbek at her last London address, 1 Lexham Gardens Hotel, South Kensington, London.
The Women Who Flew for Hitler
Mulley's The Women Who Flew for Hitler was published by Macmillan in the UK, and St Martin's Press in the US, in 2017, and subsequently in Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, and China. The book was long-listed for the Historical Writers Association Non-fiction Crown.
Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg defied gender expectations to become leading test pilots for the Third Reich during the Second World War. Both became Honorary Flight Captains, and both were awarded the Iron Cross for their service. Yet although both were motivated by deeply held convictions about honour and patriotism, their contrasting views on the Nazi regime meant they ended their lives on opposites sides of history.
"Vividly drawn... this is a thrilling story", wrote Anne Sebba in The Telegraph,[12] while The Times called the book "popular history of a high order",[13] and The Spectator thought it "well researched and beautifully written".[14] A critic for The Literary Review judged it "Superb and beautifully written, well paced and full of drama".
Agent Zo
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Bibliography
Clare Mulley, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb (Oneworld Publications, 2009) ISBN978-1-85168-657-5.
Clare Mulley, contribution to: Carole Angier and Sally Cline, eds., The Arvon Book of Life Writing: Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir (Methuen Drama, 2010) ISBN978-1-4081-2418-5.
Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II (Macmillan, 2012) ISBN978-1-4472-2565-2.
Clare Mulley, 'Introduction', Xan Fielding, Hide and Seek: Story of a Wartime Agent (Folio, 2014)
Clare Mulley, 'Remembering the contribution of the Jewish Female Special Agents of the Second World War' in Jewish Lives, Public Service (Jewish Museum, London, 2017)
Clare Mulley, The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries (Macmillan, 2018)
Clare Mulley, Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless [World War II] Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2024, ISBN978 1 3996 0106 1, 393 pp.
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