Helen Fry and Kate Vigurs

Historians Helen Fry and Dr Kate Vigurs discuss the role of women in the intelligence services during two world wars and explain how they often defied conventions of the time to take on demanding and dangerous roles behind enemy lines.

In Women in Intelligence: The Hidden History of two World Wars Fry explains how women took on a range of roles in both world wars, running spy networks and escape lines, parachuting behind enemy lines and interrogating prisoners. It is a panoramic work of history that ranges from La Dame Blanche Belgian network, which knitted coded messages into jumpers, to the women interpreting aerial images and those running whole sections. Fry is a historian and biographer and author of more than 20 books about intelligence, prisoners of war and the social history of World War II, including The London Cage, The Walls Have Ears, MI9, and Spymaster.

Vigurs’ book, Mission Europe: The Secret History of the Women of SOE, focuses on the women who worked in the Special Operations Executive in World War II. She explains how SOE recruited women to ‘set Europe ablaze’. Stories of the famous names working in France are well known but Vigurs looks at lesser-known individuals working in other countries, including Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Poland and at the Jewish agents recruited to work in Eastern Europe. Vigurs is an independent historian, author, lecturer and academic advisor, and also author of Mission France.