Anglo-Polish Spy. She was born on her parents’ estate at Mlodziesyn, thirty miles from Warsaw. Her father, Count Jerzy Skarbek, was a Roman Catholic; her mother, Stephanie Goldeder, was Jewish. On the 2nd. November 1938, at the Evangelical Reform Church in Warsaw, she married Jerzy Gizycki. Shortly after their marriage, he was sent to Ethiopia as the Polish Consul, and the couple were in Addis Ababa when Hitler invaded Poland. They made their way back to London but their marriage, which had never been very good, ended in separation; he died in 1973, in Mexico. Krystyna made her way to Hungary, hoping to travel to Poland. In Budapest, she met an old acquaintance, Andrzej Kowerski, with whom she fell in love. Krystyna made three undercover visits to Warsaw, collecting much military and economic information which was sent to London. On her return from the third visit, she and Kowerski were arrested by the Hungarian Secret Police, but were, eventually, released. After this, they contacted the British Ambassador, Sir Owen O’Malley, who arranged for them to be given false passports, under the names Christine Granville and Andrew Kennedy (q.v.). With these new identities, the pair conducted much espionage work in Turkey, Palestine and Egypt, including the information about troop movements which enabled Churchill to predict that Hitler would declare war upon the Soviet Union. In Cairo, Christine joined the Special Operations Executive and was sent to Algiers, from where, on the 6th. July 1944, she was dropped by parachute into occupied France. Here she became part of the “Jockey” underground network, led by the British officer (of Belgian descent) Francis Cammaerts. On the 13th. August, however, Cammaerts was arrested by the Gestapo, along with Major Xan Fielding and a French officer, Commandent Sorenson. They would almost certainly have been executed if Christine had not gone to the prison in Digne where they were being held, claimed to be married to Cammaerts and was the niece of Field Marshal Montgomery, and pointed out that the Allies had just landed nearby and would take reprisals on those who had killed “her husband and his friends.” The Gestapo officer may not have believed this, but agreed to release the three for a price of two million francs. Christine managed to contact Algiers, and the money was dropped by parachute and the three released. On the 1st. January 1945, Christine was awarded the George Medal for having saved the lives of two British officers, and the French awarded her the Croix de Guerre avec Palmes for saving that of Commandant Sorenson. After the War, Christine tried her hand at various jobs ( a telephonist at India House, a saleswoman at Harrod’s dress department) but was not very successful in any of them. Eventually, she became a stewardess on the Shaw-Savill line to Australia. On the voyage, she met a 41-year old bathroom steward named Dennis George Muldowney, born in Wigan of Irish parents, who had been married and divorced. He fell in love with her, but she did not respond favourably. On her return to London after one voyage, she wrote to Andrew Kennedy, who was working in Germany, to ask whether she might join him abroad. She was due to leave on the 16th. June 1952 but, on the previous evening, Muldowney went to the Shellbourne Hotel in Lexham Gardens, near Earl’s Court, and stabbed her to death. He pleaded guilty and was hanged on the 30th. September at Pentonville Prison. When, 36 years later, Andrew Kennedy died, he was buried in the same grave as Christine. (bio by: Iain MacFarlaine)