Her first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb (Oneworld, 2009) republished in 2019 to mark the centenary of Save the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographer's Club Prize. The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of the Second World War (Macmillan, 2013) led to Mulley receiving Poland's National cultural honour, the Bene Merito, and has been widely translated. Mulley's third book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler (Macmillan, 2017), a joint biography of two women at the heart of the Third Reich but who ended their lives on opposite sides of history, was long listed for the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown. All the books have been optioned for film or TV.
Mulley is a regular contributor to TV history series for the BBC, Channel 5, Channel 4 and the History Channel, while also contributing to Newsnight, Songs of Praise, various news programmes, and radio including the Today Programme, Woman's Hour and Great Lives and PM.
Mulley writes and reviews non-fiction for The Spectator, BBC History magazine, The Telegraph and other titles. She has served as Chair of the Judges for the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown in 2017, and again in 2021.
Life
Clare Mulley was born in 1969 in Luton, England. In 2006 she graduated from the University of London with a distinction for her master's degree in Social and Cultural History.[1] Her dissertation was on Affection or Affectation: The Role and Rhetoric of Maternalism in the Development of Women's Social Action in Victorian Britain.[2]
Clare Mulley lives in Essex, England, with her husband, the artist Ian Wolter, their three daughters & hairy lurcher.[3]
Works
The Woman Who Saved the Children (Eglantyne Jebb)
While working for Save the Children, Mulley was introduced to the life of Victorian-era British social reformer Eglantyne Jebb.[2] Her biography The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb[4] (Oneworld, 2009).
It was 1919 when Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square for distributing humanitarian leaflets, and few in London were sympathetic to a woman hoping to help the children of Britain's former enemies. Nevertheless, within weeks Jebb secured the first donation to her ‘Save the Children’ fund from the public prosecutor at her trial. Five years later, she drafted the pioneering statement of children's human rights that has since evolved into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most universally accepted human rights instrument in history. Yet she was never particularly fond of individual children, ‘the little wretches’ as she once called them. Eglantyne's story is one of passion, compassion and pioneering leadership in the face of national opposition.
The biography was published in 2009, to coincide with the 90th anniversary of Save the Children and the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.[5] The book was published to critical acclaim and then-UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it a "truly brilliant book".[6] Reportedly, Brown read the book while away on holiday and was moved to offer the unsolicited review.[6] The biography won the Daily Mail Biographer's Club prize.
The book was republished to mark the centenary of Save the Children in 2019, has been translated into Korean and Spanish, and is under option.
As noted on the copyright page of the book, all of the author's royalties are donated to Save the Children's international programmes.[7]
The Spy Who Loved (Krystyna Skarbek a.k.a. Christine Granville)
In 2012 Macmillan published Mulley's biography, The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II.[8]
Churchill called her his favourite spy, and part-Jewish, Polish-born Countess Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, was Britain's first and longest serving female special agent of the Second World War. Despite being arrested more than once, Skarbek used her guile to save not only her own life, but also those of many of her male colleagues in three different theatres of the war. It was her service behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France that made her legendary among the special forces however. Not only did she make the first contact between the French resistance and the Italian partisans on opposite sides of the Alps in preparation for D Day in the south, she also secured the defection of an entire German garrison on a strategic pass in the mountains. Awarded the OBE, the George Medal, and French Croix de Guerre, her tragic early death made the papers around the world, yet her true story was kept hidden.
The book received excellent reviews in the British, American, Canadian and Polish press.[8][9][10] Nigel Jones[11]
The biography has now been published in Britain, the USA (St Martin's 2013), Poland, Hungary, Russia, China and Italy, and is under option.
In 2013 Mulley was awarded with the Bene Merito honorary distinction by the then Foreign Minister of the Republic of Poland, Radoslaw Sikorski.
In September 2020, after a six-year campaign, Clare Mulley unveiled an English Heritage Blue Plaque to Krystyna Skarbek at her last London address, 1 Lexham Gardens Hotel, South Kensington, London.
The Women Who Flew for Hitler (Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg)
Mulley's most recent work, "The Women Who Flew for Hitler" was published by Macmillan in the UK and St Martin's Press in the US, in 2017, and since in Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic and China. The books was long listed for the Historical Writers Association Non-fiction Crown, and is under option.
Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg defied gender expectation to become leading test pilots for the Third Reich during the Second World War. Both became Honorary Flight Captains, and both were awarded the Iron Cross for their service. Yet although both were motivated by deeply held convictions about honour and patriotism, their contrasting views on the Nazi regime meant they ended their lives on opposites sides of history.
'Vividly drawn... this is a thrilling story' wrote Anne Sebba in The Telegraph,[12] while The Times called the book 'popular history of a high order',[13] and The Spectator thought it was 'well researched and beautifully written'.[14] A critic for The Literary Review judged it 'Superb and beautifully written, well paced and full of drama', .
Awards and honours
Winner of the Daily Mail Biographers Club Prize for biography of Eglantyne Jebb, The Woman Who Saved the Children (2007).
Awarded the Bene Merito cultural honour of the Republic of Poland (2014).
Long listed for the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown for The Women Who Flew for Hitler (2018).
Bibliography
Clare Mulley, The Woman Who Saved the Children: A Biography of Eglantyne Jebb (Oneworld Publications, 2009) ISBN978-1-85168-657-5.
Clare Mulley, contribution to: Carole Angier and Sally Cline, eds., The Arvon Book of Life Writing: Writing Biography, Autobiography and Memoir (Methuen Drama, 2010) ISBN978-1-4081-2418-5.
Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Female Special Agent of World War II (Macmillan, 2012) ISBN978-1-4472-2565-2.
Clare Mulley, 'Introduction', Xan Fielding, Hide and Seek: Story of a Wartime Agent (Folio, 2014)
Clare Mulley, 'Remembering the contribution of the Jewish Female Special Agents of the Second World War' in Jewish Lives, Public Service (Jewish Museum, London, 2017)
Clare Mulley, The Women Who Flew for Hitler: The True Story of Hitler's Valkyries (Macmillan, 2018)
Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler alive in the Führerbunker in late April 1945.
Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek,, also known as Christine Granville, was a Polish agent of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during the Second World War. She became celebrated for her daring exploits in intelligence and irregular-warfare missions in Nazi-occupied Poland and France. Journalist Alistair Horne, who described himself in 2012 as one of the few people still alive who had known Skarbek, called her the "bravest of the brave." Spymaster Vera Atkins of the SOE described Skarbek as "very brave, very attractive, but a loner and a law unto herself."
Richard Jebb was an English journalist and author in the field of Empire and colonial nationalism.
The Save the Children Fund, commonly known as Save the Children, is an international, non-governmental organization. It was founded in the UK in 1919, with the goal of helping improve the lives of children worldwide.
Andrzej Kowerski was a Polish Army officer and SOE agent during World War II. From 1941 he used the nom de guerreAndrew Kennedy.
Francis Charles Albert Cammaerts, DSO, code named Roger, was an agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and Asia against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany. In France, SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Cammaerts was the creator and the organiser (leader) of the Jockey network in southeastern France in 1943 and 1944.
Mary Marshall was an economist who in 1874 had been one of the first women to take the Tripos examination at Cambridge University – although, as a woman, she had been excluded from receiving a degree. She was one of a group of five women who were the first to be admitted to study at Newnham College, the second women's college to be founded at the University.
Eglantyne Jebb was a British social reformer who founded the Save the Children organisation at the end of the First World War to relieve the effects of famine in Austria-Hungary and Germany. She drafted the document that became the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.
Eglantyne Louisa Jebb was an Anglo-Irish social reformer. A keen supporter of the arts and crafts movement, in 1884 she founded the Home Arts and Industries Association as a way of reviving country crafts and overcoming rural poverty.
Florence Ada Keynes was an English author, historian and politician.
Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg was an aviator who served as a test pilot in the Luftwaffe before and during World War II.
Madeleine Rayner, known professionally as Madeleine Masson, was a South African-born English-language author of plays, film scripts, novels, memoirs and biographies.
Mulley is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
Dorothy Frances Buxton was an English humanitarian, social activist and commentator on Germany.
Geraldine Emma May Jebb CBE, known as Gem Jebb, was the daughter of Heneage Horsley Jebb and Geraldine Croker Russell. The Jebbs were a distinguished Irish family, prominent in both the Church of Ireland and the legal profession: her paternal grandparents were Robert Jebb QC and Harriet Horsley, a descendant of Bishop Samuel Horsley. Her mother was a daughter of John Russell, Archdeacon of Clogher and his wife Frances Story. She was the Principal of Bedford College, University of London, from 1930 to 1951, the first higher education women's college in the United Kingdom. She was unmarried.
The Women's Peace Crusade was a grassroots socialist movement that spread across Great Britain between 1916 and 1918. Its central aim was to spread a 'people's peace', which was defined as a negotiated end to the First World War without any annexations or indemnities. The movement was first established in Glasgow in July 1916, and officially launched on 10 June 1917. It later spread across Great Britain, with demonstrations taking place in Leeds, Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham and Lancashire. Although it gathered a substantial following, the Women's Peace Crusade faced opposition from both the government and police, with members being arrested and reportedly threatened.
Teresa Łubieńska, née Skarżyńska, was a social activist, Resistance fighter – lieutenant in the Polish Underground Army – and survivor of two Nazi concentration camps. After World War II, she settled in England, where she worked on behalf of Nazi-German camp survivors. In May 1957, she was the victim of an unprovoked and fatal stabbing at London's Gloucester Road tube station. The assailant was never traced and her assassination remained still unsolved.
Margaret Neville Hill CBE devoted her career to the welfare of the elderly and was the founder of Hill Homes in Highgate, and Hornsey Housing Trust in Hornsey.
Lewis Bernard Golden was a British charity administrator and first general secretary of Save the Children Fund from 1920 to 1937.
Louisa Wilkins OBE, also known as Mrs Roland Wilkins was a British writer and agricultural administrator. She was involved in the creation and recruitment for the Women's Land Army during World War One. She was an enthusiast for small holdings and after the war she inspired the creation of a small holding co-operative for women who had entered agriculture during the war.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
