New Books In Biography

It’s almost a cliché by now to say that we need stories of strong women, but that doesn’t lessen the fact that we do. And biography is a field uniquely poised to transmit such stories- of compelling, complex and, at times, contradictory female characters- to a broad audience. Case in point: Clare Mulley‘s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville (St. Martin’s, 2013). Yes, she loved and had a number of love affairs but, as Mulley makes clear, the significance of Granville’s life isn’t that she was, to all appearances, pathologically alluring to men. Rather, her life is riveting- it has meaning in the present day- because she seems not to have craved men nearly so much as she craved adventure, challenging work that put her at great risk. This was not simply adventure for adventure’s sake either, but adventure in service to a greater good, especially that of her homeland of Poland. For all her efforts as a secret service agent during World War II were in aid of her country, which is, in