Anthony Bourdain and the history of suicide: the importance of language by Fay Bound Alberti

On 8 June, the BBC reported the sad news that US celebrity chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain had died as a result of suicide. Over the next few days, tributes to Bourdain poured in for Bourdain, who was widely respected not only for his writing and presenting, but also because he was passionate about social and political justice. Bourdain was a vocal advocate against sexual harassment and supported his partner Asia Argento in her sexual abuse allegations against shamed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. 'He taught us about food', said Barack Obama, 'but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. he made us a little less afraid of the unknown. We'll miss him'.

Anthony Bourdain with then President Barack Obama

Almost immediately the world's media began to speculate about Bourdain's death, detailing every single nugget they could find about its circumstances, asking why he died, how he died and what 'drove' him to 'commit suicide'. Suggested causes ranged from long term depression to a break up with his partner Argento, with whom he was said to be besotted. Argento was accused of cheating on the chef, and appallingly, blamed for causing Bourdain's death. Their mutual friend Rose McGowan wrote a letter on behalf of Argento, reminding the world how wrong-headed this view was: 'Do NOT do the sexist thing and burn a woman on the pyre of misplaced blame. Anthony's internal war was his war, but now she's been left on the battlefield to take the bullets'.

Heated debates about Bourdain's death erupted all over social media. Some suggested he was murdered by Weinstein. Others wrote about the pressure on people to live perfect lives, especially since Bourdain's death swiftly followed that of the designer Kate Spade, who was equally successful, equally admired and apparently content, who died from suicide on June 5. After the detailed descriptions of death came the blame, and then the claims of selfishness; 'From every corner of the world you were loved. So selfish. You've given us cause to be so angry', said the actor Val Kilmer. 

Suicide is a complex, sad event. And its language is important. Not just the language of blame and selfishness, which is unhelpful at best and destructive at worst, but also the language in which the act of suicide is itself framed. One debate on Twitter concerned whether or not Bourdain 'committed' suicide, a term that is widely used but judgement-laden. Those who pointed out that suicide shouldn't be a 'PC" issue; that we should be able to speak correctly according to terms - and that Bourdain had committed (or undertaken) an act - missed the point entirely.

The reason why suicide is so emotionally and morally fraught is because of its history, as well as the way it has been philosophically framed. The word 'commit' is no longer appropriate in talking about suicide because it is no longer a criminal offence. People commit murder, assaults and fraud, but they do not commit suicide. To suggest that they do is to ignore the complex emotional history behind the phrase, and to frame suicide in a moralising way that provokes a lack of understanding for people who die from suicide, as well as people who are struggling with suicidal thoughts. 

Until 1961, suicide was a criminal act. The Suicide Act decriminalised suicide in England and Wales so that those who tried to kill themselves would no longer be prosecuted (the act didn't apply in Scotland, since suicide was never an offence under Scottish law). Assisting in suicide, or more precisely 'assisting, aiding or abetting suicide' became a distinct offence, which is why people will travel to Swiss clinics to end their own lives through voluntary euthanasia. I was reminded, when I read about Bourdain, of the news coverage of David Goodall, the 104-year-old retired Australian scientist who, in May this year, chose to end his life in a Swiss clinic: 'At my age, and even rather less than my age, one wants to be free to choose the death when the death is the appropriate time', he said.  

David Goodall, bidding goodbye to his family before leaving for Switzerland

The moral outrage that had accompanied Bourdain's death was missing in news reports. Was this because he was older? Because his death took place in an official space? Because it was more dignified? Or something else. Why isn't the decision to take one's own life an individual one, since our lives, in modern philosophical terms, are ours to do so as we choose? Why is suicide illegal?  

The answer lies in religious belief, which for centuries was intertwined with the legal system in the UK. The early Christian theologian St Augustine and the Dominican Friar St Thomas Aquinas both argued that suicide was taking away a life that was not one's own, but God's.  Suicide, from the Latin 'sui' (of oneself) and 'cidiim' (a killing) was a rejection of God's power, sine only God had the right to create and destroy life. 

Saint Augustine of Hippo, attributed to Gerard Seghers

To commit suicide was therefore akin to committing a sin, as well as a criminal offence. And society was cruel to the bodies and the memories of those who died by suicide. If proven to be sane, they were denied a Christian burial and carried to a crossroads in the dead of night. There, their bodies would be placed in a pit with a wooden stake driven through their chests - in case their possessed spirits returned to contaminate the rest of the village. There would be no mourning, no prayers. 

This tradition must have been extremely difficult for the loved ones in an age when religious belief was universal. It was also harsh in other ways: the dead person's family were stripped of any entitlement to the deceased's belongings for they were handed to the crown. Social historians Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy have written of cases where this happened in seventeenth-century England, when insanity and depression were still regarded as spiritual rather than mental afflictions.  

Not all cultures have been so unforgiving. At the other extreme of suicide as a religiously outrageous choice is self-denial and self sacrifice as a supremely spiritual act. Suicide can be understood to be an act of honour rather than disgrace - most famously in Japan, where Samurai warriors would carry out Seppuku, a ritual form of disembowelment, rather than become hostages of their enemies. 

Seppuku with ritual attire, courtesy of Wikipedia

It is extraordinary to think that suicide in the UK was a crime until 1961. But attitudes to suicide are, as the case of Anthony Bourdain shows, filled with fear and anxiety, as well as anger. They are fraught with ideas of moral right as well as public accountability - who are we responsible for in life, and when is it acceptable to ignore those responsibilities? This is particularly controversial when a person dying from suicide has children.

In the digital age, suicide can be private, but it can also be public. There have been many cases of YouTube suicides, when the death of suffering people is filmed, as well as encouraged, by anonymous viewers. This tragic combination of an individual need for support and a vocal yet unfeeling audience, seems to highlight the desolation of many people who are in search of a degree of empathy or understanding that is not forthcoming. Consider the Logan Paul debacle, in which a YouTuber visited a forest in Japan known for its use as a 'suicide spot'. When they came across a man hanging from a tree, Paul said 'call the police bro', but headed in for a close-up. The 'fun vlog' was posted on YouTube under the heading: 'We found a dead body in the Japanese suicide forest'. The video has since been removed as a result of protests. 

Logan Paul

Suicide continues to divide us in an age of digital spectacle. Paul was vigorously defended by YouTubers and viewers who felt that he was simply reporting the facts. That suicide was a reality and he covered it as such. Where are the lines between reporting and creating sensational events in the digital age, whether they are happy or tragic? And what kinds of languages are needed to talk about suicide in an age where performances of the self are much more instant, public and permanent than ever before? 

Talking about suicide is important, both to respect the dead and their friends and families, but also to prevent people from feeling that suicide is the only choice. We are good at highlighting mental illness in the 21st century as being common and widespread; we are less good at doing anything about it. Mental health services are constantly being cut and the social stigma around self-harm limited many people from finding help. 

There were over 6,000 deaths from suicide in the UK in 2015. The highest rate was in men aged 40-44 years old in the UK (in Ireland it was for men aged 25-34). Suicide rates for women are at their highest in a decade, though far more men die from suicide every year than women. We might say that it's a social problem as much as an individual one, since men are not traditionally encouraged to talk about their problems, or to get help for mental illness. 

Whatever the causes of death from suicide, it's not a criminal or a wilful or a selfish act. It is a result of a person being in so much pain that living has become unbearable. That is not shameful, nor a sign of a person's weakness. And it isn't about blame. We need to move away from the language of 'committing' suicide because it makes a difference in how depression and mental health is framed and understood. 

www.fayboundalberti.com 

Samaritans mental health hotline is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It can be contacted at any time from any phone for FREE on 116 123. 

A kimono by any other name ... by Lesley Downer

Writing about old Japan, there are many words which are very difficult to translate. The architecture, customs, clothing, even hairstyles are so different that the words simply don’t exist in English. For the entirety of Japanese clothing, as diverse in terminology as our blouse, skirt, dress, etc, we have only ‘kimono’ and maybe ‘robe’ and ‘gown’ that come remotely close.

In Japanese ‘kimono’ just means ‘something worn’, ’clothing.’ It’s come to mean traditional Japanese clothing, usually women’s wear.

Maiko and okami-san (house-mother): 
2 sorts of 'kimono' 

Not surprisingly in pre-modern Japan, the period I write about in The Shogun’s Queen, the different parts and types of clothing all had different names. The basic garment which we call a kimono was a kosode. Then there was the uchikake, a rich brocade overgarment (‘brocade’ - does it really communicate the rich silk?) with a quilted hem that trails on the ground behind you. I tried calling it an ‘over kimono’ and finally settled on ‘mantle’ though ‘mantle’ evokes something quite different from an uchikake.

Young unmarried girls including maiko (teenage trainee geisha) wear furisode, kimono with long swinging sleeves, while one of the markers of the fully qualified geisha is that she wears a kimono with shorter sleeves.

As for the obi, do readers understand the Japanese word or should I translate it as ‘sash’ or cummerbund’?

And how to describe tea ceremony? Does ‘bamboo scoop’ or ‘bamboo spoon’ evoke the tiny exquisitely shaped artefact that you use to take two scoops of green tea? Does ‘bamboo whisk’ conjure up the delicate shaving brush-like implement you use to beat the tea?

Chasen, chashaku, chawan (bowl), natsume (caddy)

Then there’s traditional architecture. When you visit someone you slide open the door and step into an area I call the vestibule, the entry way or the entrance hall. It’s where you leave your outdoor shoes and is a good step below the level of the main floor of the house. There you’re still outside, you haven’t intruded into the house proper, so you call out. And when you’re invited in you’re actually invited to step up. But do vestibule or entry way or entrance hall sufficiently communicate all this? And does it matter?

My YA author friend Victoria James has been busy changing the language of her novel to make it comprehensible to American readers. Do Americans understand ‘nobble’? And what do they understand by ‘biscuit’?

This probably all seems very simple. Of course writers should be as understandable as possible, should do their best to make even the most foreign of cultures accessible. My editors naturally want me to make my text as comprehensible as possible.

Maiko in furisode

But what is the best way to take the reader on a journey to another place and another time? To what extent do we need to hold the reader’s hand?
Following the rule of accessibility I might write, ‘She put on her kimono and over it her mantle and went to the entrance hall and slipped her feet into her wooden geta clogs ...’ But supposing instead I wrote ‘She put on her kosode and over it her uchikake and went to the genkan and slipped her feet into her geta ...’

Supposing I used chashaku instead of bamboo spoon and chasen instead of bamboo whisk and genkan for the entrance hall of a Japanese house?

In Sea of Poppies Amitav Ghosh is completely unforgiving. He peppers his sentences with foreign words. Some you understand straight away from the context, for some you have to flip back to the last use of the word and some you never understand. You just have to glide over them. He uses no italics and there is no glossary.

For example:: ‘... this was no ordinary ship bearing down on him but an iskuner of the new kind, a ‘gosi ka jahaz’, with agil-peechil ringeen rather than square sails. Only the trikat-gavi was open to the wind and it was this distant patch of canvas that had woken him as it filled and emptied with the early morning breeze. Some half dozen lascars sat perched like birds on the crosswise purwan of the trikat-dol, while on the tootuk beneath the serang and the tindals were waving as if to catch Jodu’s attention.’

'Sash'? 'Cummerbund'?
The green garment is the ends of the tayu (courtesan)'s obi,
knotted at the front to indicate that if you are rich, lucky
and bold enough you might be allowed to untie it. 

Speaking in New York he said that growing up in India he’d read English literature voraciously. He’d read, for example, the word ‘marshmallow’ and though he didn’t know that it was soft and white he knew it was edible and that was enough. He argued that it wasn’t necessary for the reader to understand every word but that the use of authentic words of the era created white noise, a phrase which evokes rather wonderfully the creation of atmosphere in fiction - though some might argue that he does take it rather far.

To me it raises very interesting questions. How do we write about a very foreign culture? How many foreign words can we include? Do they give atmosphere or hold up the reader? Following Ghosh’s example, could I use kosode and uchikake, and if not, why not? Ghosh’s language is actually quite difficult but that doesn’t stop you reading.

To quote him: ‘Language in novel works differently from language in journalism — it establishes atmosphere and background. Each good novel has white noise — filmmakers do it through visuals. Novelists do it with words, and so one must throw as a writer everything into the mix.’

Lesley Downer's latest novel, The Shogun's Queen, is now out in paperback. For more see www.lesleydowner.com.

'The History in the Words' by A L Berridge

All historical novelists know to avoid the ‘wrong words’ – the little anachronisms that boot us into the wrong century will the speed of a train crash. What I find much, much harder is learning when to avoid the right ones.

You know the ones I mean. The ones that are perfectly, demonstrably, authentically in period – but somehow sound as if they’re not. An astute copy-editor wisely advised me not to use the word ‘scan’ in ‘In the Name of the King’, because its rock-solid pedigree in the 16th century didn’t prevent it from sounding as if it sprang to life with a chunk of technology in the 20th.

Not what I meant

He was right. Not just because of the terrifying reader who’s so certain I’ve Got It Wrong that he can’t wait to tell the world on Goodreads, but because it creates a ‘blip’ – a moment of surprise that jolts the reader out of the story.  Anything’s better than that, so we swallow our pride and our research and consign our historical darlings to the dump.

Sometimes we can find ways round it, but they feel equally counter-intuitive. I have a character in my Crimean series who uses a lot of 19th century London slang, and since much of it sounds screamingly modern I often find myself choosing the oldest versions I can find. ‘Mug’ is a perfectly good 1850s word for the face, but I opted for the equally accurate but archaic ‘phizog’ instead. I only do this in the early chapters when readers are still adjusting to the voice, but it still feels strange to make my world seem more alien and distant than it really was.

And how far should we go anyway? The totally authentic ‘Shut your trap’ sounds suspiciously modern for 1854, but if I replace it with the original ‘shut your potato trap’ then I’m risking an altogether different kind of ‘blip’. I want my readers to be following a story, not stopping to think ‘oh, so that’s the origin of that expression!’ Words should be invisible, the mere medium of the story, and never the focus of the reader’s attention.

But they’re all we’ve got, and it’s sometimes a real struggle to make them convey what we intend. Numbers are clean things, fresh with every use, but words are second-hand and come to us laden with history and association. I wanted to use the historically-correct word ‘kid’ in ‘Into the Valley of Death’, for instance, but had to avoid it because of its modern associations with America, gangsters and cowboys.

Not what I meant. Though I think I could be persuaded...

Sometimes our innocent immersion in a period leads us to miss even more dangerous interpretations, and I still blush to remember a copy-editor’s polite suggestion that a character’s fast movement from a wall might be better not described as ‘jerked off’.

Sometimes it’s really frustrating. When writing the Battle of the Alma for ‘Into the Valley of Death’, I had to really struggle to avoid the one single phrase that would have described exactly what was happening as the Russians harnessed their cannon to field carriages to draw them from the field. Those two-wheeled carriages were called ‘limbers’ and the correct expression is ‘limbering up’, but I wanted the reader to see a scene like this:

Russian artillery at reenactment of the Alma (Sergey Kamshylin / Shutterstock.co)

and not something like this:

That may seem appallingly patronising to my readers, but the power of word-association can be stronger than logic. I know exactly what a limber is, and so will many of my readers, but the modern association still kicked in and gave me a ‘blip’ as big as a solar eclipse. Out went ‘limbering up’ and in went ‘backing to limber’, which in context was just as accurate.

And ultimately – I don’t mind. This kind of thing doesn’t happen with dead languages, but ours is a living record of our own past. I like the fact that the word ‘limbering’ remains like a ghost of its extinct military origin. I like the fact we still say ‘scot-free’ without the slightest idea that we’re using an Anglo Saxon word that means ‘exempt from royal tax’. The words stay when the meaning has gone, pebbles thrown up on the beach when the tide has gone out.

Mostly we hardly even notice them. A word just ‘is’, and we rarely stop to question how it got that way. Some people still refer to a ‘drawing room’, without any idea it’s an abbreviation of the ‘withdrawing room’ to which ladies would retire during the port and cigars. Many more will actually own a ‘penknife’ – but how many have ever used it to sharpen a quill? 

Or how about this:

The BMW i8 plug-in hybrid sports car, unveiled in Frankfurt 2013 – with an engine that produces 231 horsepower.

After all these years. Few of us have ridden in a horse-drawn vehicle, but that’s still the standard by which we judge those driven by the combustion engine. We can see both together in this fabulous colour footage from 1920’s London, but when we do we know we’re looking at history. Only the words have kept the history alive – just under the bonnet of our cars.

I suppose it’s natural to retain ‘horsepower’, since units of measurement are often the last to change. The horse itself is still measured in ‘hands’, just as many of us still measure distance in ‘feet’. How far does that go back? When did we last even think about it – except perhaps to marvel at men with twelve inch feet and to wonder if the size were proportional?

‘Hands’ and ‘feet’ will probably go in the end, as imposed metrication grinds its way through our remaining scraps of measuring heritage, but it’ll take more than that to expunge the many centuries of the horse from our language. Our idioms are steeped in it – ‘give him his head’, ‘rein him in’, ‘spur him to action’ – and they won’t disappear in a hurry.

Or will they?

Enter the Historical Language Saboteur, the chap who uses words without the slightest interest in what they actually mean. He’s the man who gives us the utterly meaningless ‘tow the line’, because he doesn’t understand the Naval historical concept of ‘toe the line’. He’s the man who writes about ‘giving free reign’ or ‘reigning in’ because the idea of controlling a horse by means of reins is beyond him. He's the man who infects millions of innocents, who dutifully repeat his mistakes because they've seen them written down on the internet. Distortion of language used to take centuries to accomplish, but these days it can happen in a matter of weeks.

But perhaps that’s as it should be. Perhaps he too is part of history. Mistakes and ‘back-derivations’ have played their own part in shaping our language, and they often enrich our understanding in how people thought and spoke in earlier times. Those who complain about today’s ‘sloppy diction’ might want to ask how the words ‘norange’ and ‘napron’ became respectively ‘orange’ and ‘apron’ – and if they say ‘a norange’ aloud, then they’ll know.

That’s the best part of language history for me: what it tells us about our ancestors and how they lived. I’m fascinated, for instance, by the fact we use English words for an animal in the field but French ones for the same animal on the table – and what this tells us about life under the Norman Conquest. The peasants were English who knew cows, sheep and pigs, but the court aristocracy were only familiar with boeuf, mouton, and porc – beef, mutton, and pork.

The history of language can obviously teach us far more profound truths than that, and I only wish I knew more about it.  My mother was lucky enough to attend the lectures of Professor J.R.R. Tolkien himself, and one of the remarks she recorded in her notebooks takes my breath away even now. Tolkien told his students that the first languages to develop a future tense were those of peoples who lived by the sea.

I have no idea how accurate that is, but it makes me tingle because of its essential truth. To comprehend the idea of a future, one has to have a sense of the ‘beyond’ – and who would learn that quicker than those who can look further than the edge of the world?

But the past is ‘beyond’ too, and words can take us there if we let them. Words aren’t just a record of the whole of human history – they are that history, and the living chain that joins it all together. If we choose to, we can follow them right back to the beginning, when the first people came out of the forest to stare in wonder at the power of the sea.

***

If you think words can never be dull, you should visit A L Berridge's website.
If you care about the history behind the words, you should visit the Crimea Appeal. 

Found in translation? Biographer Clare Mulley considers the importance of language to identity.

Last week my biography of Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent in the Second World War, was published in Poland. I think she would have been delighted that, in a way, she was finally coming home. There is no doubt that Poland was always home for her, albeit a home that had sometimes rejected her, and one to which she could not return after the war when the country was run by the Soviet-sponsored Communist regime. By the time of her death, in 1952, this courageous and deeply patriotic woman had adopted British nationality along with her British nom-de-guerre, Christine Granville, of which, she wrote, she was 'rather proud'. However she remained, above all, a patriotic Polish émigré, switching effortlessly between Polish, English and French depending on her audience. In addition to everything else, Krystyna/Christine is a fascinating study in identity. 

Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville

Krystyna's childhood home, Trzepnica, Poland

Of course, biographies are studies in identity too, but when my book was translated into Polish this took on deeper meaning. Would the Christine that I had researched, pictured and tried to present, be the same Krystyna that emerged on the pages of the Polish edition? Would the translation release her from the English idioms that she had never completely mastered, but which she enjoyed playing with for effect, and enable readers to hear her voice more clearly, more directly? Would the 'English sense of humour' she displayed in her letters to British friends, be lost, and, looking back, what nuances had I failed to catch when translating the woman to the page in the first place. Just how defined are we by our language, our nationality, and the nationality of those who aim to describe us?

Interestingly, my Polish publisher has changed the title of the book. Instead of The Spy Who Loved, which refers to Krystyna’s deep-seated desire for adrenalin, danger, men and, above all, freedom - for her country and for herself, the Polish edition is called, The Woman-Spy: A Pole on His Majesty’s Secret Service. Pleasingly there is still a hint of Bond here (Ian Fleming was inspired by Krystyna), but the central intrigue is now not that she was a passionate woman, but that she was a Polish woman working for the Brits. 

The British cover

The Polish cover

Krystyna, and later her lover Andrzej Kowerski, were exceptional in being Polish nationals employed by the British special services during the war. Krystyna’s reasons, however, were entirely pragmatic. She was in southern Africa with her second husband, a diplomat, when Poland was invaded in September 1939. By the time she was back in Europe, Poland had fallen - but had not yet established its Government-in-Exile. Desperate to join the fight against the Nazis occupying her homeland, Krystyna stormed into the British Secret Services HQ and demanded to be taken on there and then. Her plan, soon put into action, was to ski over the perilous Carpathian mountains, sometimes in temperatures of -30 degrees, smuggling money and propaganda to the fledgling Polish resistance, and information, radio codes and microfilm back out. By the time she arrived in Budapest for her first mission, however, the Polish underground was getting organised and were determined to maintain their independence. As a result the main resistance group, the ZWZ, refused to work with Krystyna because officially she was already a British agent. This was a legitimate concern. The two countries might be allies but their interests would not always be aligned. ‘We are the Polish Underground,’ one officer put it colourfully, ‘and we do not wish the British to peek inside our underpants’.

Once in occupied Warsaw, however, Krystyna did join a fiercely independent Polish resistance group: the Musketeers. Unfortunately they would later be disbanded in disgrace; their leader assassinated for having entered into talks with the Nazis regarding the Russian threat. Krystyna would now never be accepted by Poland's exiled government. Putting her life on the line was not enough, being passionately patriotic but not especially political, she had failed to play the strategic game. In her haste to serve her country she had in some Polish eyes betrayed it.

Krystyna Skarbek, in British uniform

When the war in Europe ended, Krystyna was left stateless. She knew she could never return to Poland under the Communist regime. She may not have been aware that the British had at one point traded her name with the NKVD (precursor of the KGB), but being a pre-war Countess and war-time British special agent was enough to guarantee she would not be well-received. Yet the British, for whom she had put her life on the line for six years, the longest tour of duty of any female special agent, dismissed her with only £100. When someone in the British administration suggested she was not entitled to further deployment or citizenship because she had been fighting for Poland rather than Britain, she rightly remonstrated that this was rather 'hard', given that 'I have got into so much trouble with the Poles because I worked for the firm'. The last British memo relating to her stated, ‘she is no longer wanted’. It was not our finest moment.

Ultimately Krystyna did gain British citizenship, having at one point refused to accept honours from a country that would not give her residency. When she died, in 1952, she had been awarded the British George Medal and the OBE, along with the Croix de Guerre from France, and an array of ribbons that any General would have been proud of. Yet among her collection, now kept at the Polish Institute and Sikorski Museum in London, is one unofficial badge of honour; a silver gorget (designed to be worn at the throat) in the shape of a shield embossed with the Polish white eagle. Because she was a British agent, Krystyna has never been honoured by the Poles, and this badge was perhaps her own private statement of her loyalty to, or token of appreciation from, the country that she served if not on paper, than certainly within her heart.

Krystyna's medals. The gorget is centre top. 

Publically recognised or not, Krystyna was never an exclusively British heroine. In fact despite being honoured officially here but not in Poland, she is probably better known in Poland today. Certainly the book launch at the Warsaw Uprising Museum next week is being organised by wonderfully generous and enthusiastic Poles, and attended by the Polish Foreign Minister several other cabinet members, as well as the British Ambassador and French First Consul. Earlier, during my research, I had also found plenty in Polish archives, and through interviewing Poles both in Britain and Poland who, or whose relatives, had known Krystyna. On the other hand there was even more information in British archives. But how did she view herself, and in what language did she choose to communicate?

Krystyna was born and brought up in an area which is now Poland, but was then part of the Russian Empire. Belonging to a family of patriotic aristocrats, she spoke Polish at home, but French at her convent school. By the time she arrived in London in 1939, via Europe and southern Africa, she spoke some English too, although French remained her default foreign language. As a result, when the British sent her to Hungary it was under the guise of being a French journalist. It was here that Krystyna met her compatriot, soul-mate and partner-in-arms, Andrzej Kowerski, and their language of love was definitely Polish; she was his affectionate 'kotek' or kitten, and he her 'kot', her cat. In Egypt she took classes in English and Italian. She now spoke English charmingly, if not always very accurately, with a lilting accent and similarly seductive turn of phrase. She would often translate idioms literally if she felt it added impact, such as when telling admirers how she loved to 'lie on the sun'. But then even her French was idiosyncratic. She was 'fluent but rather breathy', one friend noted, and her natural manner was to speak in a 'halting... panting fashion'. Always conscious of the power of language, when she felt  her Polish charm could not get her what she wanted, Krystyna would simply petition friends to write on her behalf 'in your King's English'.

All of the letters I traced in Krystyna’s own hand were written in English – although still with the odd Polish endearment and literally translated turn of phrase thrown in. 'Perks kochany' - literally 'Darling Perks' - she boldly opened one 1945 letter to Harold Perkins, her formidable SOE boss. This letter, the rest written in English, is a wonderful testimony to her courage and determination. 'May be you find out I could be useful getting people out of camps and prisons in Germany - just before they get shot', she wrote, 'I should love to do it and I like to jump out of a plane even every day'. So brave, yet she clearly also felt nervous that her English might be letting her down, adding 'Sorry for the spelling!' in a rather jarring ps.

Krystyna's letter to Harold Perkins, March 1945 (TNA, HS9/612)

It seems that Krystyna mostly thought in Polish; this was the language that shaped her and best expressed - possibly even helped to define - her feelings and ambitions. As she learnt more languages she enjoyed collecting other useful turns of phrase, 'quel potron' (what a coward) was a favourite that friends remembered, as was the pleasingly expressive: 'bloody fool'. As with her approach to friendships, it seems that Krystyna would pick and choose her language to suit her mood, intentions and audience.

Wherever I was researching, I tried to get to the truth of this extraordinary woman, but the fact is that there were many truths. Krystyna could be kind and generous, even with her life, but she could also be cruel and self-centred. She was tough and fiercely independent but also rather vulnerable. She lied, exploited and deceived, but she fought for justice, freedom and honour. Her mother was Jewish, her father was anti-Semitic; she was brought up a Catholic but converted to secure a divorce; she was a pre-war beauty queen and a highly-trained special agent fighting among men. She spoke several languages, was known under about twenty names, and she had two nationalities. It was the same Polish Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek that became the British Polish émigré Christine Granville.

The truth is that we can only understand Krystyna in the context of her country, although it often rejected her, and in the context of her times, although I would argue that in many ways she was ahead of them. In life Krystyna was informed by, and let down by, Poland and Britain, but both her birth-country and her adoptive-country seem ready to embrace and honour her now. And if the Polish translation of my biography helps to reframe and present another flavour of this complex woman to the world, then that is certainly appropriate and I am absolutely delighted.

www.claremulley.com