Liberte: Short film shines light on unsung British WWII secret agent Noor Inayat Khan
“Beautiful, striking and petite,” Noor Inayat Khan was “the unlikeliest of spies”.
An accomplished musician and children’s writer, described as “a daydreamer” by her friends, few would have foreseen that she would go on to earn the George Cross for her service to her country.
Liberte. Pic: Sky History
Now, 80 years after her first mission, the little-known Second World War heroine will have her story told in the short film Liberte, documenting her time as a British secret agent.
Actress and journalist Sam Naz, who wrote and co-produced the film, as well as playing the lead role, told Sky News: “I just couldn’t quite believe that here was a woman that looked like me, who had played such an important role during World War Two, and yet I had been taught nothing about her. And it kind of sparked something in me… I couldn’t shake her off.”
Naz, who has worked for the BBC, Radio 5 Live and currently presents for Sky News, searched out newly declassified files on Khan in the National Archives, visited the Imperial War Museum and retraced Khan’s steps around the safe house in Paris where she was held, as well as reading interviews from people who had known her.
She also visited the historic Nazis headquarters in Paris, 84 Avenue Foch, during the German occupation. This was where Khan was first held, and from where she twice tried to escape.
Naz says: “I looked at that building in awe, but it was impossible not to think of some of the horrors that happened in those makeshift cells in that building.”
At the time Khan was recruited as a spy, the allies were struggling to win the war, and Churchill was under pressure to come up with a solution.
A new spy agency – the Special Operations Executive (SOE) – was set up, and as the number of suitable men to send into key countries dwindled, women saw themselves recruited into dangerous roles for the first time.
As a fluent French speaker, and previous native of Paris (her family fled France when it fell to the Nazis), Khan was an invaluable asset to the resistance.
After first joining the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, she moved on to the SOE where she was given special training as a wireless radio operator in occupied territory and in June 1943 was sent out into the field.
She was the first woman to ever do so – all the female agents before her had been sent as couriers.
Khan’s new persona was children’s nurse, Jeanne-Marie Renier, but to her SOE colleagues, she was known simply as Madeleine.
Naz explains: “When you think of a spy and when you visualize how TV, drama and film have portrayed spies, she’s the opposite. She’s a woman of colour. She’s of Indian descent. She’s a Muslim.
“I really wanted to put her front and centre. I wanted to showcase her and highlight this remarkable woman who had played such a key role.”
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Liberte. Pic: Sky History
‘Unbreakable’ inner strength
At the time, the life expectancy of someone in that role was just six weeks. This was because the Nazis were able to pick up the radio signals and work out where they were being transmitted from. But that didn’t put Khan off, far from it.
She arrived on her mission, only to find that the entire network she had been sent to join – codenamed “Prosper” – had all been captured by the Nazis.
She insisted on remaining in Paris to undertake what has since been called “the most dangerous post in France” – becoming the sole British radio operator operating in the city and doing her best to help rebuild the network and bring in new agents.
But it was after being betrayed by the Gestapo and captured by the Nazis that her true grit and courage became clear.
Naz explains: “She remained as that key link to London at great risk to herself. Eventually, they caught up with her, but that kind of courage is remarkable.”
Khan was held for around 10 months, and eventually sent to Germany, but never once cracked under Nazi brutality.
Considered “a particularly dangerous and uncooperative prisoner” according to records, she was kept separate from other inmates.
Describing testimony given by her German captors after the war, Naz says: “They talk about how others came and went and some were very quick to crack… But with her, there was this inner strength that just was unbreakable.”
Her “conspicuous courage, both moral and physical” would later be praised in reports of her capture.
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It was that strength that Naz says was the most important element of the film: “Her resilience and her refusal to break under that immense pressure and turmoil that she would have gone through and being tested to the limit by the Nazis.”
‘Heart-wrenching and awe-inspiring’
Executed in the Dachau concentration camp in September 1944 along with three other female prisoners, Khan’s final word is believed to have been Liberte – the title of the film.
Five years after her death she was posthumously awarded the George Cross by the King.
With this year marking the 80th anniversary of her mission, Naz says it became more important to her than ever to keep Khan’s memory alive.
“I think drama really is powerful in doing that and bringing those people back to life for a moment on screen. And I think it just felt like the perfect medium to tell her story… I just hope I did it justice.”
Directed and co-produced by Christopher Hanvey, the film also features music composed in Khan’s memory by her late brother Hidayat Inayat. Her family has called the film “heart-wrenching and awe-inspiring”.
In 2020, Khan became the first woman of South Asian descent to have a blue plaque honouring her. It’s displayed on the wall of her wartime London home, 4 Taviton Street in Bloomsbury, London.
While Liberte may be complete, Naz isn’t quite ready to let Khan go. Her production company, Laconic Raven, is now developing the drama mini-series SOE about the Special Operations Executive which Khan was part of. The show will tell the story of five women, including Khan.
Naz says: “We’ve had SAS Rogue Heroes, which focuses on the brilliant work done by the men. But I think it’s time for the women to have their showcase too…
“It’ll blow your mind. And they’re from all backgrounds. There’s working-class women. There are young mothers who went out there. They’re incredible. And they all deserve their own time in the spotlight.”
Liberte premieres tonight on Sky History at 10.15pm and will then be available on NOW.
Actress Olivia Hussey, best known for playing Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.
She died peacefully at her home in California, surrounded by her loved ones on Friday, according to a post shared on her official Instagram account.
The message, posted with a sunset photo of Hussey in her youth, paid tribute to “a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her”.
It went on: “Olivia lived a life full of passion, love, and dedication to the arts, spirituality, and kindness towards animals”.
Calling her a “truly special soul”, her family said while her “immense loss” was grieved, they would also “celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry”.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1951 to an Argentinian father and English mother, Hussey returned to London aged seven with her mother and studied at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.
Spotted by Italian director Zeffirelli in a stage show of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie opposite Vanessa Redgrave, Hussey’s performance as Juliet aged just 15 made her a star and won her a Golden Globe.
Sixteen-year-old actor Leonard Whiting played her Romeo, with the pair going on to sue Paramount Pictures in 2022 for sexual abuse due to the Oscar-nominated movie’s nude scene.
(L-R) Franco Zeffirelli, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting in 1968. Pic: AP/Eustache Cardenas
The case was dismissed by a judge the following year.
Hussey would work with Zeffirelli again, playing the Virgin Mary in the 1977 TV miniseries Jesus Of Nazareth.
Appearances in horrors including Black Christmas and Psycho prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning established Hussey as a scream queen over the years.
Other notable appearances included Hercule Poirot movie Death On The Nile and Mother Teresa biography Madre Teresa.
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Hussey was reunited with Whiting in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was loosely based on Shakespeare‘s Romeo and Juliet.
Her daughter, actress India Eisley, played her on-screen daughter in the movie.
It was Hussey’s final screen role, according to IMDB.
Hussey leaves behind three children, Alex, Max, and India, her husband of 35 years David Glen Eisley, and grandson, Greyson.
Andrew Garfield says he bakes cookies every year in memory of his late mother.
The double Oscar nominee‘s mother Lynn Garfield, from Essex, died in 2019 from pancreatic cancer.
In a conversation about his new film We Live In Time, he told Sky News about the special ways he likes to remember her.
“My mum had the most incredible chocolate chip cookie recipe that I will do every year on the anniversary of her birth and on the anniversary of her death.
Pic: StudioCanal
“So, I will bake them, and we will all eat them, but I’ll leave a few out for her somewhere, you know, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus at Christmas or something.”
The English-American actor says he looks to keep the connection to his mother alive and notes that he has some of her keepsakes in his own home.
“I have her perfume in my house that my mum used to wear when I was a kid. I have it, like, in a very special place. I’ll just like [smell it], when I need it.
“It’s like in the missing and the longing, you actually get closer to the person. It’s a weird thing. As we reach out in grief, we actually feel much closer to the person so it’s this weird conundrum”.
Pic: StudioCanal
‘Leaving a legacy behind’
Garfield stars alongside Florence Pugh in the romance film We Live In Time, which follows an up-and-coming chef and a Weetabix salesman through a decade of their love story.
Pugh says she loves playing “really strong-willed women” and says playing a woman dealing with ovarian cancer allowed her to look at the idea of creating a legacy.
“She’s constantly juggling whether she does something for herself, does something for her daughter, does something for her family and ultimately, she’s allowed to do all of those things.
“I do believe that she is trying to leave that kind of legacy behind so that her daughter is proud of her.
“Just because you are a parent and you’re a mum does not mean that your wills and wants also completely vanish and disappear and you can’t have or want them too”.
Pic: StudioCanal
‘A level of detail and care’
We Live In Time is directed by Brooklyn filmmaker John Crowley.
Having previously worked with Garfield on Boy A, the Irish director says seeing Garfield and Pugh on screen together is magic.
“All that life experience is present in his performance,” he says.
“I wouldn’t say he’s vastly different. I think the level of detail and care that he puts in the work is every bit as much as it was back then, there’s just more there now”.
We Live In Time is in cinemas on Wednesday 1 January.
Elizabeth J. Birch has been a musician for a decade, has won several awards, and loves her job. However, she continues to feel like an outsider in a competitive and precarious industry.
As a wheelchair user, she commonly experiences accessibility barriers at venues, but there’s a more pressing issue – tokenism.
Birch tells Sky News: “While it’s not explicitly stated that it’s tokenistic, it feels tokenistic because [organisations] need a certain amount of disabled people on their board.
“For example, I was once called a poster girl for inclusion.”
When asked how the experience made her feel, she pauses and reflects: “Perhaps it didn’t make me feel like an individual or it made me feel less than human because I was narrowed down to one aspect of myself.
“It’s not about trying to look inclusive, it’s about trying to be inclusive.”
A recent report by Help Musicians and the Musicians’ Union found 94% of those who have experienced discrimination based on their disability said it impacted their ability to work or advance their career progression.
Nyrobi Beckett-Messam, one half of the sister duo ALT BLK ERA, was diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions in 2021.
Out of the fear of discrimination, she wasn’t open about her hidden disability until only a few months ago.
“I didn’t feel comfortable sharing that side of me because society doesn’t accept it,” she says.
And she doesn’t regret opening up.
“I think the biggest benefit of me disclosing my disability is seeing how it’s impacted others,” she says.
“It’s really empowering, I wake up feeling every morning like the effect I’m having on the community.”
Among other key findings, the Musicians’ Census identified the following areas of concern when it comes to financial security, fair pay, and discrimination in the workplace:
• On average there is a £4,400 pay gap between disabled and non-disabled musicians
• The gap widens a further £1,700 for musicians with mental health conditions and/or neurodivergent profiles
• 27% of disabled musicians said they had experienced racism, compared with 7% of non-disabled musicians
• 73% of disabled respondents said they aren’t in receipt of any state benefits, tax credits, or support
Grace Meadows, head of engagement at Help Musicians and Music Minds Matter, said: “What this report really starkly highlights is just how much more work the industry needs to do to support disabled musicians but also to support anybody who may have a disability to speak up without fear of discrimination or disadvantage.
“And with benefits, really what we are needing to see is a change in what those systems look like so people can get the support they need when they need it.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
A government spokesperson told Sky News: “We are bringing forward proposals to reform health and disability benefits in spring as part of a proper plan to genuinely support disabled people.
“We will work closely with disabled people and their organisations, whose views will be at the heart of these plans.”
Both Birch and Beckett-Messam believe in the social model of disability which recognises that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their impairment or difference.
For now, they are determined to stay in the industry, but that could change if it stays the same.
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