‍Beaten and shot she but never betrayed Britain, spy Princess Noor

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‍THE FRAIL woman lay on the floor of Dachau Concentration camp half naked and sobbing, she had been raped, beaten and her stomach had been stamped on by a guard in jackboots.

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‍The door of the room, bare but for a bed and a bucket, banged open and four Gestapo guards burst in. She was dragged with three other women, two French and another English, to a small square and forced to kneel.

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‍The English woman next to her took her hand and gripped it tightly as SS guard Willhelm Ruppert walked down the line behind them and shot each one in the back of the neck.

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‍One by one they slumped forward dead on to the earth as the beaten woman cried out: “Liberty!” just before she fell. Minutes later she was cremated.

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‍And so ended the life of Noor Khan, a poet, an author, a musician, a British spy and a real-life princess whose bravery was to find fame in headlines across the world years later.

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‍The Daily Mail said: “Her courage is one of the most inspirational stories of the Second World War.”

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‍Khan was born Princess Inayat Khan in a monastery in Moscow on New Year’s Day, 1914. Her father, Inayat Khan, was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the so-called Tiger of Mysore who had resisted British imperialism in India in the 18th century. Her mother, Ora, was American.

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‍Soon after the First World War, the family relocated from India to a home north of Paris. Khan, then 13, played the harp and the piano. As she got older, she wrote children’s stories, published a book and studied music. She was a shy and pretty young woman, with deep dark eyes. Polite and humble.

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‍When France fell in June 1940, she fled to London and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She used the name Nora Baker and registered her religion as “Church of England” to avoid complications.

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‍Khan was in the first group of WAAFs to be trained as radio operators and became proficient, which⁠ — coupled with her fluent French — brought her to the attention of the Special Operations Executive, desperate for radio operators to work with the Resistance in France.

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‍The pretty princess began basic operations training at Top Secret Wanborough Manor, near Guildford, Surrey with lessons in shooting, grenades, and explosives. During a mock Gestapo interrogation. Khan was pulled out of her bed and forced into an interrogation room.

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‍Bright lights blazed in her face as she faced faux Gestapo officers in Nazi uniform. She was stripped and forced to stand naked for hours while questions were fired at her.

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‍A witness recalled: “She seemed terrified. She was so overwhelmed and nearly lost her voice. She was so timid and polite and very humble.” Khan’s instructors were divided over whether she was cut out to be an agent. She was too nervous and emotional.

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‍Being a radio operator was the most hazardous job behind the lines, and they had the highest death and capture rate among agents. Life expectancy in France was six weeks. Khan was told the risks.

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‍But she soon found herself in an espionage network and became the first British female spy in France. Her code name was Madeleine, and her cover name Jeanne-Marie Renier, a student at the French College of Agriculture.

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‍She made her first call to London 72 hours after her arrival — the fastest check-in by any agent. Transmissions needed to be brief; the Germans used radio direction-finders around the clock.

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‍The Princess, however, did show signs of carelessness. She did not always follow French customs, such as putting in milk last when making tea. And she left a file of security codes in a college hall.

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‍When her spy ring collapsed, she went on the run even though she was told by London to return home. But she was the last radio operator in Paris and knew she was needed. The Germans knew of her after she was betrayed by a Resistance insider for £100,000.

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‍Over months, Khan relayed data back to SOE locations where to drop supplies for the resistance. She sent information to rescue American pilots hiding in Paris and assisted in the escape of 30 other Allied airmen who had been shot down.

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‍She moved from place to place, dying her hair and using assorted disguises. But one day she was cornered and taken to Gestapo quarters where she was tortured and beaten, never saying a word about her work. Twice she escaped but was caught. More beatings, more silence.

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‍Khan was kept as a “Nacht und Nebel” which means “night and fog.” It was a phrase for prisoners who were considered highly dangerous, and they had to “disappear.”

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‍On January 16,1946, Charles De Gaulle posthumously awarded Noor the French gold star for courageously escaping from and fighting the enemy. Britain awarded her the George Cross in 1949 for her moral and physical bravery.

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‍On the night she died, aged just 30, her mother and brother had the same dream. Noor came to them surrounded by a blue light and told them she was free.

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‍BURTON WRITES A LAST LETTER LIZ CHERISHED FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE

‍Burton wrote a letter Liz took to her grave

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‍ACTOR Richard Burton’s love for Liz Taylor haunted his heart all his life, as most of us knew. And some of us understand that feeling to this day.

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‍But back in the early days of his stage career, many journalists and some of the public believed he became her lover to achieve even greater fame.

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‍Whatever the view, his deep feelings were to remain with him until the day he died … and a few days before he passed on to the greater universal stage in August 1984, aged 58, he wrote her a letter. His last words were of the love that he held for her until his last breath.

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‍His letter was posted from his home in Céligny, Switzerland where he was dying of a stroke following years of declining health, mostly due to his drinking.

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‍It arrived at her home in Bel Air, Los Angeles shortly after she had returned from the actor’s memorial service and she was to keep it in her bedside drawer until she died on August 23, 2011, aged 79, when it was placed in her coffin.

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‍The Press only found about what Burton had written shortly before her death. He wrote: “It’s Sunday afternoon. I drink. My loneliness is a great empty house, as useless as this one. If you could answer me if it’s not too late for this drunken sailor longing for his harbour.

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‍“You are like rain and memory, clear and dark, weapon and wound, false and beautiful, burning and cold. There is no life without you.

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‍“You are the bone and the vein, murky and clear, the wall and the ivy, the grass that will kiss my grave. Deep down, we were never apart. And I think we never will be.

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‍“Who can love like that — fiercely, even when it’s over? Who still reaches across time, pride, silence and even death? Maybe true love doesn’t leave.

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‍“Maybe some hearts never stop remembering. Maybe love like theirs doesn’t end. It just lingers—written in ink, whispered between stars, and buried deep in the soul.”

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‍Wonderful words, eh?

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‍THE MOUSE THAT GNAWED

‍From the Manchester Evening News 1875.

‍“A WOMAN factory worker was minding her own business, getting on with her job when a mouse suddenly dashed across her worktable. Hearing her panicked screams, a gallant male co-worker rushed forward and grabbed the rodent.

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‍“But his hero status soon dissolved as the mouse ran up his sleeve and out again through his open-neck shirt. As he screamed in surprise, the little critter darted into his mouth – and he swallowed it.

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‍“The mouse began to tear and bite inside the man’s throat and chest, and the result was that the unfortunate fellow died after a little time in horrible agony.”

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‍“His body was taken to the morgue and the mouse went on to the London Hospital medical school.”

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‍JACK THE RIPPER’S TEASING LETTER

‍WAS A CON BY TWO JOURNALISTS

‍“The sensational ‘Jack the Ripper’ letter which is now preserved in the National Archives is the creation of an enterprising London journalist.” — Robert Anderson, Head of CID, 1888.

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‍THE LETTER written in red ink shocked Scotland Yard. Jack the Ripper was taking the mickey out of their desperate efforts to track him down.

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‍Part of it read: “I’m down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again.”

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‍The letter dated September 25, 1888, was addressed to ‘Dear Boss’ and sent to the Central News Agency in New Bridge Street, for forwarding to the Ripper team at the Yard.

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‍It was the first piece of correspondence signed by the Ripper, and from then on, that is how the Victorian killer was known. It sent the Yard into a spin and wasted months of police time.

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‍For the two-page letter was secretly written by two journalists, the Yard later revealed. And it became the first ‘Fake News’ letter in history. It contained several spelling and punctuation errors and for months was believed to be true. The killer had thrown down a challenge to the Ripper team.

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‍It read: “I keep hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track.

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‍“You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle from the last job to write with, but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope, ha! ha!

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‍“The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.”

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‍In 1931, more than 40 years after the Ripper murders, retired journalist Fred Best of The Star newspaper reportedly confessed to friends that he and reporter Tom Bullen made up the infamous ‘Dear Boss’ letter and ‘Saucy Jack’ postcard in 1888. Best was fired from the Star shortly after.

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‍The pair created the messages to boost newspaper sales by keeping public interest in the Whitechapel murders high.

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‍Best, a chain smoker, was known around Fleet Street for using aggressive and often unethical tactics, such as bribery, to secure exclusive stories and hard-drinking hack Bulling was a penny-a-line freelance working for the Central News Agency at the time.

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‍He was paid per line of published text, not by time, making his income highly variable. sometimes earning nothing at all for long hours of work.

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‍Police were suspicious about the letter because it was addressed to the Central News Agency, and the public, like the Ripper, probably would not understand the role of news agencies in the industry.

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‍Sir Robert Anderson, head of CID, later wrote in his 1910 memoirs that he knew the journalist’s identity but refused to name him to avoid a potential libel lawsuit.

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‍Like many documents related to the Ripper case, the ‘Dear Boss’ letter disappeared from the police files shortly after the investigation into the murders had ended.

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‍It may have been kept as a souvenir by one of the investigating officers because in November 1987, the letter was returned anonymously to the Yard and is now in The National Archives at Kew.

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‍•Ripper victims’ clothing; handcuffs for suspects and documents were also stolen from the Yard over the years. Many turned up for auction.

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‍TERRY MANNERS

‍9 MARCH 2026

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