Kowerski, who had lost part of his leg in a pre-war hunting accident, was now exfiltrating Polish and other Allied military personnel and collecting intelligence. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into occupied Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa, and was later parachuted behind enemy lines into France, where an agent's life expectancy was only six weeks. His family had been known since as early as the 12th century, thanks to Jan of Góra, who raised the future prince Bolesław III Wrymouth.

While still in Hungary, she relayed important intelligence materials, some of which was related to Operation Barbarossa. Skarbek arrived in the midst of a large operation headed by British major Desmond Longe of supplying by parachute the local maquis with arms and supplies. Churchill recruited the young bride into Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), the first female British agent to serve in the field and the longest-serving of all Britain's wartime women agents.Krystyna Skarbek was born in 1908 in Warsaw, [13] the second child of Count Jerzy Skarbek, [14] a Roman Catholic, and Stefania (née Goldfeder), the daughter of a wealthy assimilated Jewish family.

In 1941 she began using the alias Christine Granville, a name she legally adopted upon naturalisation as a British subject in December 1946.When Skarbek's husband, Jerzy Giżycki, was informed that Skarbek and Kowerski's services were being dispensed with, he took umbrage and abruptly bowed out of his own career as a British intelligence agent. Number 1 Lexham Gardens, Kensington – then the Shellbourne Hotel – was Granville’s home for the last three years of her extraordinary life. Granville’s most legendary exploit involved rescuing Cammaerts and two other agents held by the Gestapo. Skarbek is often characterised in terms such as Britain's "most glamorous spy" [11] or "Churchill's favourite spy". The Woman Who Saved the Children', (Oneworld, 2009), is about Eglantyne Jebb, controversial founder of Save the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographers Club prize.