Speaker: Clare Mulley
Topic: Agent ZO: Poland’s Lost Resistance Fighter
Venue: Vinson Lecture Theatre
Time: 11:30-12:30 Sunday 15 September
Talk Summary:
Elżbieta Zawacka, also known as ‘Elizabeth Watson’ but more often as ‘Zo’, was the only woman to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command during the Second World War. In Britain she was trained and enlisted as the only female member of the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the ‘Silent Unseen’, before parachuting back behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Poland. There, while being hunted by the Gestapo, who arrested her entire family, Zo took a leading role in the largest organised act of defiance against Nazi Germany, the Warsaw Uprising, and in the liberation of her country. After the war, Zo was demobbed as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed postwar Communist regime not only imprisoned her, but also ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for more than 40 years.
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Clare Mulley’s previous books include the award-winning The Woman Who Saved the Children, on Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children; The Spy Who Loved about the remarkable Polish-born British special agent Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville; and The Women Who Flew for Hitler, which tells the story of Nazi Germany’s only two female test pilots, one of whom tried to save Hitler’s life, while the other tried to kill him. Clare reviews for the Spectator, BBC History and the TLS, and has served as a judge for the Historical Writers Association and Biographers Club book prizes. Her latest book is Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless Second World War Resistance Fighter, Elżbieta Zawacka (Weidenfeld & Nicolson).
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