Winston Churchill's favourite spy, Christine Granville, an ally of the Polish Countess Krystyna Skarbek, was one of the first women to join the British Special Operations Directorate (SOE) as an undercover agent during World War II. She took part in risky missions and on one occasion saved two of her comrades from being shot by the Gestapo. She was killed years after the end of the conflict. Her mother - who was to be killed by the Nazis - came from a family of Jewish bankers and her father was an aristocrat belonging to a noble Polish lineage. She grew up learning languages, riding and taming horses, skiing, learning to shoot shotguns, but when she was 22 her father died leaving them bankrupt. Krystyna found work at the Fiat factory, however she contracted a rare lung disease from handling toxic compounds. She was traveling with their second husband, a Polish diplomat, when the Nazis invaded their home country. They traveled to London and she volunteered to be part of the SOE, the agency created by Churchill to organize actions of subversion and sabotage against the Nazis. Under the name of "Christine" she organized escape routes from Poland, took part in operations in Hungary and fought with the French Resistance. She was captured along with another agent by the Nazis. To avoid death, she bit her tongue so hard that she caused a hemorrhage and began to cough. Her captors thought she had tuberculosis and for fear of catching it, they released her. Decorated for her services, she became unemployed after the war and soon ceased to receive severance pay from SOE. She lived in a house run by the Polish Relief Society. She worked as a housekeeper and telephone operator, then waited in bars, hotels and even on a boat, where she met sailor Dennis George Muldowney who became obsessed with her. After not being reciprocated, he killed her.