Very Special Agent Fifi was described as ‘one of the most expert liars in the world’. Employed by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill’s wartime spook organisation, her job was to entrap trainee agents and test their mettle in the field.
Kept secret for seventy-five years, her existence long treated as a myth, Fifi’s files were declassified in 2014 and her identity revealed. She was Marie Chilver, a half-Latvian, half-British escapee from occupied Europe. Marie’s extraordinary story reveals the inner workings of Britain’s secret services and the lengths the SOE would go to in equipping their agents for their highly dangerous espionage work in Nazi-dominated Europe.
- First-ever book about Agent
Fifi; her identity was only revealed in September 2014.
- Interest in the British
Secret Service has never been more intense. See the success of the life story
of fellow SOE Agent Zigzag, Eddie Chapman. Agent
Zigzag was a Number 1 bestseller for author Ben Macintyre and the story has
been optioned by New Line Cinema with Tom Hanks co-producing. Also, the
continuing popularity of James Bond and the phenomenally successful BBC TV
series Spooks (big-screen movie Spooks: The Greater Good filming
throughout 2014).
- Reviews in the history
interest press, national weeklies, national daily and Sunday newspapers, to
include: BBC History Magazine, The Mail on Sunday and The Times, TLS and The Spectator.
