Winston Churchill's 'favourite spy' Christine Granville - the inspiration behind James Bond character Vesper Lynd - gets a blue plaque at hotel where she was stabbed to death by a stalker

Daily Mail ^ | 9/16/2020 | Dan Sales

[L.A.Justice]

A wartime spy described as Winston Churchill's favourite has finally been remembered with a blue plaque.

Christine Granville, who was born Krystyna Skarbek in Warsaw, joined British intelligence in 1939 and is said to have inspired Ian Fleming's spy character Vesper Lynd.

She struggled after the war and was given cheap lodgings at a London hotel run by the Polish Relief Society.

It was her home until she was murdered by a stalker in 1952, aged 44.

The English Heritage Blue Plaque has been unveiled at the former Shelbourne Hotel (now 1 Lexham Gardens), in Kensington, and is inscribed with both her original name and the one she adopted.

Granville's daring exploits and impressive career during wartime have been widely accepted as Bond author Fleming's inspiration for double-agent Lynd in Casino Royale.

[L.A.Justice]

'Her achievements, which included securing the defection of an entire German garrison in a strategic pass in the Alps, and saving the lives of many of her male colleagues, led Churchill to call her his favourite spy, and Britain to honour her with the George Medal and OBE.'

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She also got the microfilm about planned German invasion of Soviet Union...

I have not heard of her before... I heard about other British female spies during WW2...

[mylife]

Was Winston boofing her?

[mylife]

007 is like complete fantasy

[Redcitizen]

Shaken, not stirred.

[Robert DeLong]

Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek A.K.A. Christine Granville

Eva Green in the 2006 film Casino Royale

[Kevmo]

Bullshiite. Churchill’s favorite spy was the one who pointed the Americans towards a Japanese first strike attack. Dusko Pop ov was the double agent

[L.A.Justice]

Eva Green is one of my favorite Bond ladies...

[L.A.Justice]

Bullshiite. Churchill’s favorite spy was the one who pointed the Americans towards a Japanese first strike attack. Dusko Pop ov was the double agent
______________________________________

I think Popov was from Yugoslavia...I think he was a big womanizer like James Bond...

[mylife]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Sachs

[mylife]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milicent_Bagot

[devere]

“007 is like complete fantasy”

Actually, there was more than one real life model for the character James Bond, the most important of which was the Serbian Dusan Popov. Popov was undoubtedly the source of the baccarat scene in Casino Royale; Ian Fleming, also a British agent, had observed him in action at the Lisbon casino. Like Bond, Popov was a gambler, drinker, womanizer, and enormously brave, but unlike Bond he didn’t like to kill. The action-hero part of the Bond character was modeled on Patrick Dalzel-Job, a commando who also worked with Fleming during WW2. Dalzel-Job was however a non-drinker who only loved one woman during his life. So the character James Bond is a composite of the two most memorable men Ian Fleming observed in wartime action.

[L.A.Justice]

I had no idea...I read about Kim Philby...A Soviet spy...

I did not know that a female British counter-intelligence operative played a role in exposing him...

[Kevmo]

Yes he was ,

hence his callsign as Tricycle, for his bent towards bedding 2 women at the same time.