Author: Shrabani Basu
United Kingdom, Great Britain
Published on 25 September 2025 by The History Press Ltd in the United Kingdom.
Paperback | 8 Plates, black and white
129 x 198 x 27 | 294g
‘One of the most inspirational stories of World War II … Reading this book is like watching a butterfly trapped in a net.’ – Daily MailThis is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, a descendant of an Indian prince, Tipu Sultan (the Tiger of Mysore), who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II.
In this updated twentieth-anniversary edition of Spy Princess, Shrabani Basu tells the moving story of Noor’s life, from her birth in Moscow – where her father was a Sufi preacher – to her capture by the Germans. Noor was one of only three women SOE agents awarded the George Cross and, under torture, revealed nothing, not even her real name.
Kept in solitary confinement, her hands and feet chained together, Noor was starved and beaten, but the Germans could not break her spirit. Ten months after she was captured, she was taken to Dachau concentration camp and, on 13 September 1944, she was shot. Her last word was ‘Liberté’.