SECRET AGENT’S BRUSH WITH DEATH
Dagger hid in hairbrush
A RARE wartime assassin’s dagger disguised as a hairbrush and used by Winston Churchill’s favourite spy has been donated to a museum.
The weapon belonged to heroic Polish femme fatale Christine Granville, originally known as Maria Skarbek.
An aristocrat who became a British agent months before the Special Operations Executive was founded, she was one of Britain’s longest-serving female agents in the Second World War.
Granville risked her life luring German officers and high-ranking targets to her room before killing them. She did missions all over Europe, travelling across borders sometimes hidden in the boot of a car – and sometimes fleeing machine-gun fire, along with one of the many lovers she had in the war in tow.
Once, Granville received a microfilm that showed German forces along the Soviet border. It was passed to Churchill and the wartime PM’s daughter later said Granville was his top agent. She was captured by the Nazis twice but escaped – in one instance feigning TB by biting her tongue so hard she appeared to be hacking up blood. Granville was stabbed to death by an ex-lover in London in 1952, aged 44. Her hairbrush dagger was given to House on the Hill Museum, Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, as part of a collection of an owner who passed away. Museum boss Jeremy Goldsmith said: “I would value it at £5,000-plus as these items are very rare. “The brush was in a box with other items.
“I noticed the label on it and that the handle was loose, so I slowly pulled the handle and to my surprise the dagger shot out.”
I pulled the handle and to my surprise a the dagger shot out
JEREMY GOLDSMITH MUSEUM OWNER