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Name: A Woman of No Importance
Rating: 4.7 (92 reviews)
Author: Sonia Purnell

Sonia Purnell

The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

4.7 (92 ratings)

26 mins

Brief summary

A Woman Of No Importance by Sonia Purnell is a captivating biography of Virginia Hall, an American spy who played a crucial role in World War II.

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Biographies Women's Stories Wars European History

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A Woman of No Importance
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What’s in it for me? The forgotten history of the woman who helped liberate France.

In 1942, “wanted” posters began appearing in Lyon, France’s third-largest city. The country had been defeated by Nazi Germany two years earlier. Unwilling to occupy the entire country, Hitler had installed a puppet regime in the south. But the new government had a problem on its hands.

That problem had a name – Virginia Hall. Who was she? An American socialite with a wooden leg she called Cuthbert, a Francophile who had driven military ambulances and the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines in the Second World War.

Given half a chance to prove herself, Virginia excelled. She was a natural spy, establishing a vast network of operatives across southern France and becoming one of the most effective organizers of the Resistance. Few knew her name by the end of the war, but those who did had no doubt that she had been instrumental in defeating Hitler’s Germany and liberating France.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

How a chance encounter on the French-Spanish border changed Virginia’s life;
Why the German secret police failed to catch the “limping lady” of Lyon; and
How an American spy agency brought Virginia out of retirement for one last mission.

Virginia Hall was too independent to obey her mother’s wish to settle down and marry.

The struggle against Nazi Germany in France during the Second World War was as heroic as it was bloody. Ordinary people were at the heart of the Resistance, a rearguard guerilla campaign against Hitler’s mighty army, the Wehrmacht. Outnumbered and poorly equipped, members of the Resistance relied on their courage in the face of daunting odds. Many paid the ultimate price.

But our story doesn’t begin in Europe, and its hero, Virginia Hall, wasn’t French. Born in Maryland in 1906, Virginia was the daughter of an ambitious social climber, Barbara, who had married her boss, the banker Edwin Lee Hall. It was a step up the social ladder, but it hadn’t taken Barbara as far as she had hoped. Edwin had squandered his inherited fortune and could only provide his family with the trappings of wealth.

The Halls’ spacious Maryland country house looked opulent, but it was a far cry from the residences of their more affluent neighbors. Lacking central heating and running water, it was anything but modern. But Barbara, a woman relatives described as “snooty,” had a plan – finding a wealthy suitor for Virginia.

Barbara selected Virginia’s school, a tony establishment called Roland Park Country, with an eye to preparing her for such a marriage. It wasn’t a natural role for Virginia. Tall and slim with sparkling brown eyes, she was a spirited and independent adolescent given to wearing tomboy trousers and checked shirts. In her spare time, she hunted with a rifle, rode horses bareback, skinned rabbits and made bracelets with live snakes.

She prized her freedom, but she also loved her mother. After graduating in 1924, Virginia became engaged at 18 years old. It was a valiant attempt to please Barbara, but it couldn’t last. Change was in the air. Having finally been given the vote in 1920, women were throwing off their old subservient roles. This was the age of flappers – fashionable young women who wore their hair short, smoked, drank and danced to jazz. Within a year, Virginia had ditched her fiancé.

If she wasn’t going to settle down and embrace a quiet domestic life, what was Virginia going to do with her future? Well, if you were a young East Coast socialite who had shown a gift for languages in school and had a thirst for adventure, there was pretty much only one place you wanted to go in 1925 – Paris.

Virginia pursued a diplomatic career after studying in Europe despite a horrific accident.

Paris was home to a thrilling artistic and literary scene when Virginia arrived in 1926 at 20 years old. It was worlds away from Prohibition-era America’s racial segregation. Writers like Hemingway and Getrude Stein haunted bohemian cafés, and prostitutes, philosophers and painters rubbed shoulders in smoky jazz clubs.

Virginia enrolled in a language course at the École libre des sciences politiques. She was soon fluent in French, though she retained her distinctive Maryland drawl. It was a carefree time, and it left a lasting impression. Virginia would forevermore regard France, a country she associated with freedom, as her second home.

After the fall of France, Virginia fled to Spain where she happened to meet a British secret agent.

German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany. With little real assistance from its Western allies, Poland didn’t stand a chance against the Wehrmacht’s overwhelming firepower; it fell in early October. It was Hitler’s first conquest of the Second World War.

Virginia was watching events unfold from Estonia, a small Baltic nation facing a different menace – annexation by the Soviet Union. It was time to leave, and Virginia escaped to England. She was keen to contribute to the war effort and volunteered for the women’s branch of the British Army. After being rejected, she returned to France and enrolled as a military ambulance driver in Metz, northeastern France.

Virginia returned to France as an SOE agent in the summer of 1941.

Britain was badly outgunned when the SOE was established in July 1940. This not only meant that it couldn't be picky about hiring women, but that it would have to find a different way of fighting the war. Lacking conventional forces capable of going toe to toe with the Wehrmacht, Britain resorted to “ungentlemanly” tactics. F Section, the SOE’s France taskforce, consequently had just one job: sabotage.

That required people who knew the lay of the land. More importantly, it required folks with the guts and guile to lead an underground existence and evade Nazi Germany’s terrifying secret police, the Gestapo, and its military counterpart, the Abwehr. Bellows believed he had found someone who ticked all those boxes.

Lyon was the perfect base of operations for Virginia’s mission.

Virginia was a natural spy. Sophisticated and charming, she soon had French officials eating out of her hand. Vichy, however, was too claustrophobic. The capital of the new French state was crawling with Gestapo agents and members of the French secret police, the Sûreté. It was time to move – but where?

Lyon, a city 70 miles southeast of Vichy known for its secret societies and rebellious craft guilds, provided the answer. These were the kinds of networks the SOE hoped to tap into. It was also close to neutral Switzerland – a convenient bolthole if things went wrong – and surrounded by plains well-suited for parachute drops.

The SOE lost 12 of its top agents in France over just two weeks, but Virginia engineered a daring escape.

The SOE had been hastily assembled by Hugh Dalton, a pugnacious Labour minister who spurned traditional military types and embraced unconventional tools in the fight against Nazi Germany. Virginia was one of them. Her arrival in France was a curveball the authorities hadn’t expected. But it was only a temporary advantage.

On October 10, 1941, a British agent parachuting into Bergerac in southwestern France was knocked unconscious upon landing. Virginia’s men in the area couldn’t locate him; the Sûreté had better luck. When they searched the unfortunate jumper they found a clue in his pocket which would unravel the network the SOE had painstakingly constructed over the previous months.

An Abwehr agent penetrated Virginia’s inner circle and misled the Allies with fatal consequences.

Virginia took every precaution to avoid detection. She was slow to trust, avoided compromising romantic relationships and chose hotels with multiple exits as her base. Like every agent, she lived in fear of being brûlée – French for “burnt” or exposed. Despite that, Germany’s secret forces were closing in.

The prison break was the final straw for the German high command. Already frustrated by mounting resistance in the “free zone,” Hitler ordered a clampdown. Thanks to recent radio intercepts, the Abwehr had figured out that a woman was orchestrating the Resistance in Lyon, but they still didn’t have a name. Now they dispatched 500 agents to locate the target they knew as “the limping lady.”

A treacherous mountain climb was the only way to escape German occupation forces.

The Wehrmacht had seemed invincible for three years. That changed in the fall of 1942. The Soviet Red Army encircled German forces in Stalingrad and began to turn the tide on the Eastern Front. Britain liberated Egypt and Libya in October and pinned the Germans down in Tunisia. A month later, US soldiers landed in Vichy-controlled Algeria and Morocco.

The German response to the loss of North Africa, a potential launching pad for an Allied invasion of France, was immediate. Pétain’s government was swept aside, and Nazi shock troops flooded into the “free zone.” It was a game-changer for Virginia. Operating in Vichy France had been dangerous enough; doing so under military occupation was nothing short of suicidal.

After switching to an American intelligence unit, Virginia led one final mission in France.

The months following Virginia’s mountain escape were frustrating. Her SOE bosses refused to allow her back onto active service and gave her a menial job organizing safe houses in Spain. Her pay was reduced to the level of an embassy typist. Virginia had risked everything; the rewards were paltry.

But she got another break. The United States had established a counterpart to the SOE in 1942 called the Office of Strategic Services or OSS. Since then, it had operated in the shadows of its British big brother. William Donovan, the London-based director of OSS, wanted to change that. As the Allies prepared to invade France in 1944, he seized an opportunity to boost his agency’s credibility.

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What is A Woman of No Importance about?

A Woman of No Importance (2019) sheds light on the shadowy world of wartime espionage and the career of one of the Allies’ most effective spies in the battle against Nazi Germany – Virginia Hall. In these blinks, we’ll follow Virginia from her Maryland home to the jazz clubs of interwar Paris and the warren-like streets of Lyon, the city in which she learned her trade. Along the way, you’ll discover how the “limping lady” dodged Gestapo agents, martialled the French resistance and revolutionized spycraft.

A Woman of No Importance Review

A Woman Of No Importance (2019) tells the remarkable story of Virginia Hall, an American spy who defied the odds during World War II. Here's why you should read it:

The book unveils the extraordinary life of a virtually unknown female hero.
It sheds light on the challenges and dangers faced by women spies during the war.
Virginia's resilience and determination in the face of adversity are truly inspiring.

Discover the incredible story of Virginia Hall in A Woman Of No Importance.

Who should read A Woman of No Importance?

Adventure addicts
History buffs
Francophiles

About the Author

Sonia Purnell is a biographer and journalist. She has written for the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. Her study of Winston Churchill’s wife Clementine, First Lady, was hailed as the “book of the year” by numerous newspapers and nominated for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography. Purnell is also the author of Just Boris, a biography of the current British prime minister, Boris Johnson.

Categories with A Woman of No Importance

Biography & Memoir

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