The dagger disguised as a hairbrush used by femme fatale assassin dubbed ... trends now
This is the dagger disguised as a hairbrush which was used by a femme fatale assassin dubbed 'Churchill's favourite spy' to kill German officers and other targets in the Second World War.
Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek was the first and longest-serving female special agent working for Britain during World War II.
She is said to be the inspiration behind the character of spy Vesper Lynd in Ian Fleming's first 007 novel, Casino Royale, which was published in 1953.
After Poland was overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939, Krystyna worked for the Special Operations Executive throughout the war using the pseudonyms of Christine Granville and Pauline Armand.
At the outbreak of hostilities she travelled to Britain with her then husband and joined the Secret Intelligence Service, who described her as 'absolutely fearless.'
Her success has been credited with influencing the organisation's decision to recruit more women as agents in Nazi-occupied countries.
The spy's hairbrush - now donated to a museum - contains a concealed dagger in the handle.
Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek, also known as Christine Granville, was the longest-serving female special agent of the British Special Operations Executive
This is the dagger disguised as a hairbrush which was used by the female assassin
The hairbrush was donated to House on the Hill museum, Stansted Mountfitchet
The Blue Plaque which has been unveiled at the former Shelbourne Hotel (now 1 Lexham Gardens), in Kensington, in honour of the late female special agent
She was born into an aristocratic but penniless Polish family in 1908, to a Catholic nobleman and a Jewish woman.
She was expelled from convent school at 14 for setting light to a priest's cassock during Mass.
At 23, she won a beauty pageant in the fashionable winter resort of Zakopane, and by the time the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, she was married to Jerzy Gizycki, a wealthy diplomat 20 years her senior who was Polish consul to East Africa.
The couple returned from Nairobi to London in 1939 and, while Jerzy went on to France, as part of the Polish government-in-exile, Krystyna came up with a dangerous proposal for the British Secret Intelligence Service's sabotage arm, which was known as Section D (for 'Destruction').
Her most famous accomplishment in Nazi-occupied France came after D-Day when she rescued two SOE agents from the Gestapo hours before they were due to be shot by threatening the Gestapo leader and offering him a massive bribe.
Aware the war was coming to an end, he agreed and the men walked free. A fictional version of the event featured in the 1980's TV series 'Wish me luck,' about female SOE agents.
She is said to have inspired both the James Bond characters Tatiana Romanova in From Russia with love and Vesper Lynd in two different versions of Casino Royale
Born into an aristocratic but penniless Polish family in 1908, Krystyna was the first female agent of the British to serve in the field and the longest-serving of all Britain's wartime women
In November 1940, she discovered her mother Stefania, by then separated from her father, had been arrested in Warsaw for failing to register as a Jew.
Krystyna
