SKU: 9780930872786

The Independent, Boyd Tonkin “Shrabani Basu… has pieced together Noor’s story more fully and reliably than ever before…Thanks to her book, a new generation can grasp what Noor did, and how she did it, with much greater clarity.”

Spy Princess is the remarkable biography of Noor Inayat Khan, code named “Madeleine”. The first woman wireless transmitter in occupied France during WWII, she was trained by Britain’s SOE and assumed the most dangerous resistance post in underground Paris. Betrayed into the hands of the Gestapo, Noor resisted intensive interrogation, severe deprivation and torture with courage and silence, revealing nothing to her captors, not even her own name. She was executed at Dachau in 1944.

Spy Princess details Noor’s inspiring life from birth to death, incorporating information from her family, friends, witnesses, and official records including recently released personal files of SOE operatives. It is the story of a young woman who lived with grace, beauty, courage and determination, and who bravely offered the ultimate sacrifice of her own life in service of her ideals. Her last word was “Liberte”.

A child of both East and West, Noor was born in Moscow and raised in England and France by her American mother Ora Ray Baker and her Indian father Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi mystic and musician who was a direct descendant of Mysore’s Tipu Sultan. Taught to be a pacifist and always truthful, Noor studied music and psychology, wrote children’s stories, and played the harp and veena.Rising to meet the challenges presented by WWII, Noor fled France with her family and enlisted in a non-combatant espionage role in Britain’s armed forces. She became one of only 3 women in WWII to be awarded Britain’s George Cross, the highest decoration for gallantry away from the field of battle. Noor was also posthumously awarded the highest French civilian award,the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star.

A BBC televison documentary on Spy Princess aired in 2006. To view images from this documentary, please click here .

Shrabani Basu is the correspondent for the Calcutta-based Ananda Bazar Patrika Group and writes for the Telegraph and other publications. She is the author of Curry: The Story of the Nation’s Favorite Dish. She lives in London with her family.

Pir Zia Inayat Khan is the grandson of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and son and successor of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. He serves as President of the Sufi Order International, North America, residing and teaching at The Abode of the Message, a spiritual community and retreat center in upstate New York, and home to Omega Publications. In addition to the interfaith mystical training he has received from his father, Pir Zia has studied Buddhism under the auspices of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and Sufism in the classical Indian tradition of the Chistiyya. Pir Zia received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Duke University.

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