Historical fiction author Christine Wells latest novel, One Woman’s War, has at its centre two real life heroines of the second world war. Victoire “Paddy” Bennett and Friedl Stöttinger. One a British naval intelligence officer and inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Miss Moneypenny, the other an Austrian double agent who carries a terrible secret.
The author first discovered Paddy’s story when reading about Ian Fleming.
“I discovered Paddy Bennett when I was researching British Intelligence during World War II and read a couple of fascinating biographies about Ian Fleming, who worked for British Naval Intelligence and later went on to write the James Bond novels. I came across a newspaper article that talked about the women in Fleming’s life, Paddy Bennett was widely believed to be the inspiration behind Miss Moneypenny because she worked as a secretary for Fleming at Naval Intelligence but later, she became actively involved in Operation Mincemeat. The more I read about this redoubtable woman, the more I liked her and thought she would be perfect as the protagonist for my next novel.”
Wells has written about spies and secret agents during the second world war before and I asked her if she thought there was a new hunger for the stories of these brave women.
“I think new generations keep discovering these stories for the first time. It’s so empowering to see women take on the kinds of roles they would never have dreamed of during peacetime and truly explore the outer limits of their resourcefulness and courage. There is an essay by spymaster Maxwell Knight who ran female agents during the war, enumerating the ways female agents were often more effective than their male counterparts. They also found that women withstood torture just as bravely as the men did. For instance, Catherine Dior, who I’ve written about in Sisters of the Resistance, was one of the few who did not betray her intelligence circuit under the most brutal torture.”
I wondered about the research that the author had done and how difficult it was to uncover the stories of women who are often written out of history.
“The main challenge with Paddy was the paucity of information about her. There is an entire book on Room 39 written by someone who worked there after Paddy left, which does not mention her (or any other woman). I had to imagine what Paddy would have done at the Naval Intelligence Directorate based on several newspaper interviews with her and the background information I found on how the NID worked. I was also fortunate to have an author friend, A.M. Stuart, whose uncle, Pen Slade, had worked in the NID. She sent me a wonderful memoir about him that contained his letters home and terrific cartoons and satirical verse he’d created about Room 39. I suppose Paddy’s story is fairly well-known in the U.K. because Paddy was the wife of a government minister and she hit the papers on occasion, including the time when she was in her seventies and fended off a mugger by kicking him where it hurt! Paddy said it was her years of ballet that gave her the requisite flexibility and a sturdy pair of Marks and Spencer heels! However, the secrecy surrounding Paddy’s work was probably one reason more has not been made of her contribution. Once the intelligence files started to become declassified, the contribution by women like Paddy became better known. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for her wartime service only in 1991, so it was a long time before she was recognized officially. With Friedl, there was a lot more information, including personal memoirs that feature her by people who knew her well—Joan Miller and Duško Popov. Most delicious of all, I was able to access her MI-5 file, and that made for fascinating reading. Her later life is a bit of a mystery, however, and I had to play detective to find out what happened to her after her role at MI-5 ended.”
When it comes to putting together a fictional account of real people Christine Wells has developed a tried and tested method.
“I research throughout the writing process. I do a lot of intensive background research before I begin planning the book and it takes me some months to do that. Then I will try to plot the book, which requires more finely tuned and specific research. When I say I “try” to plot the book, I’m naturally an organic writer but I have trained myself to plot because I believe it saves a lot of wrong turns along the way. But having plotted, I have to forget that I basically know where I’m going and write the book so that it develops organically. Often the end result is fairly close to my initial outline, but I have to feel as if I have that freedom that the story could go anywhere in order to get fired up to write.”
Why, I asked her are we so drawn to historical fiction as writers and readers?
“I think history is about people at the end of the day, and that is what interests me—the human stories behind great historical events. I think, too, that while none of us would want to rewind the progress we’ve made as a society, many of us feel a strong nostalgia for a time before cell phones, the internet, and social media existed. I think for writers, historical fiction means more autonomy for our characters. In the eighteenth century, before there was an organized police force, it would not be unusual for someone to take the law into their own hands. The intelligence community I write about during World War II was far more amateurish, swashbuckling, and downright eccentric than it is today. These days, you have to justify a character not simply calling the police if something happens to them. The cell phone has been death to a lot of good suspense!”
I couldn’t conclude my interview with asking what Wells is working on next.
“My next novel is not about spies, although it does touch on the Nazi plot to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor while they were in Lisbon during the war. It’s about a young woman who grows up at Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo and who comes to believe she is the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Windsor and an infamous Parisian courtesan called Marguerite Fahmy.”
(c) Lisa Doyle Redmond
About One Woman’s War:
From the author of Sisters of the Resistance comes the story of WWII British Naval Intelligence officer Victoire Bennett, the real-life inspiration for the James Bond character Miss Moneypenny, whose international covert operation is put in jeopardy when a volatile socialite and Austrian double agent threatens to expose the mission to German High Command.
World War II London: When Victoire “Paddy” Bennett first walks into the Admiralty’s Room 39, home to the Intelligence Division, all the bright and lively young woman expects is a secretarial position to the charismatic Commander Ian Fleming. But soon her job is so much more, and when Fleming proposes a daring plot to deceive the Germans about Allied invasion plans he requests the newlywed Paddy’s help. She jumps at the chance to work as an agent in the field, even after the operation begins to affect her marriage. But could doing her duty for King and country come at too great a cost?
Socialite Friedl Stöttinger is a beautiful Austrian double agent determined to survive in wartime England, which means working for MI-5, investigating fifth column activity among the British elite at parties and nightclubs. But Friedl has a secret—some years before, she agreed to work for German Intelligence and spy on the British.
When her handler at MI-5 proposes that she work with Serbian agent, Duško Popov, Friedl falls hopelessly in love with the dashing spy. And when her intelligence work becomes fraught with danger, she must choose whether to remain loyal to the British and risk torture and execution by the Nazis, or betray thousands of men to their deaths.
Soon, the lives of these two extraordinarily brave women will collide, as each travels down a road of deception and danger leading to one of the greatest battles of World War II.
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