A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII's Most Dangerous Spy
by Sonia Purnell
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"The never-before-told story of one woman's heroism that changed the course of the Second World War In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." This spy was Virginia Hall, a young American woman--rejected from the foreign service because of her gender and her prosthetic leg--who talked her way into the spy organization dubbed Churchill's "ministry of ungentlemanly warfare," and, before the United States show more had even entered the war, became the first woman to deploy to occupied France. Virginia Hall was one of the greatest spies in American history, yet her story remains untold. Just as she did in Clementine, Sonia Purnell uncovers the captivating story of a powerful, influential, yet shockingly overlooked heroine of the Second World War. At a time when sending female secret agents into enemy territory was still strictly forbidden, Virginia Hall came to be known as the "Madonna of the Resistance," coordinating a network of spies to blow up bridges, report on German troop movements, arrange equipment drops for Resistance agents, and recruit and train guerilla fighters. Even as her face covered WANTED posters throughout Europe, Virginia refused order after order to evacuate. She finally escaped with her life in a grueling hike over the Pyrenees into Spain, her cover blown, and her associates all imprisoned or executed. But, adamant that she had "more lives to save," she dove back in as soon as she could, organizing forces to sabotage enemy lines and back up Allied forces landing on Normandy beaches. Told with Purnell's signature insight and novelistic panache, A Woman of No Importance is the breathtaking story of how one woman's fierce persistence helped win the war"-- show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Beautifully crafted and read story of Virginia Hall, the OSS spy who led more successful raids in support of the Resistance in France during WWII. She epitomizes the stubborn tenacity it takes to survive in a hostile world, whether through capture by Nazis or rejection by CIA colleagues opposed to the suggestion that any woman is more competent than every man. It's impossible not to read / listen to this in awe. Remind me never to complain about anything in my pampered life again.
Id never heard of Virginia Hall before reading this book. I'm glad that I now know the story of this remarkable woman.
Virginia Hall accomplished so much working for the Resistance in France during WW2. Her struggles as a field agent were made more challenging because she was a woman, and a person with a disability. She was often overlooked in favour of inept male counterparts, even after she’d proven herself so many times. She couldn’t change her status with respect to that of men except for some very short-term gains. Yet she persevered and did what she had to do to help liberate France.
The book itself read like a thriller / spy story. Well written and remained engaging even with lots of detail. Sometimes lost track of the minor show more agents, but that never interfered with being able to follow Virginia’s story. The post-war story dragged a bit. Virginia struggled for recognition of her experience and expertise in civilian life at the CIA but the telling of that part of her story wasn't as engaging.
My one concern is the extent to which the author is objective. She seems very fond of her subject so I sometimes wondered if she was biased to see only the good in Virginia. show less
Virginia Hall accomplished so much working for the Resistance in France during WW2. Her struggles as a field agent were made more challenging because she was a woman, and a person with a disability. She was often overlooked in favour of inept male counterparts, even after she’d proven herself so many times. She couldn’t change her status with respect to that of men except for some very short-term gains. Yet she persevered and did what she had to do to help liberate France.
The book itself read like a thriller / spy story. Well written and remained engaging even with lots of detail. Sometimes lost track of the minor show more agents, but that never interfered with being able to follow Virginia’s story. The post-war story dragged a bit. Virginia struggled for recognition of her experience and expertise in civilian life at the CIA but the telling of that part of her story wasn't as engaging.
My one concern is the extent to which the author is objective. She seems very fond of her subject so I sometimes wondered if she was biased to see only the good in Virginia. show less
I experienced this as an audiobook and my review should be considered from that perspective.
Sonia Purnell does an excellent job of researching historical documents and interviewing subjects to piece together the story of Virginia Hall and bring her character and determination to life for the reader. By the end of the book I felt like I knew Virginia personally as someone I could relate to and admire. The story itself is interesting and inspiring, a young society lady ignores her family's wishes and aims for a career in diplomacy, comes up against a large amount of discrimination both as a woman and as someone with a disability, and becomes one of the best spies and organizers for the French resistance.
I appreciated the difficulty that show more Sonia Purnell must have had in gathering information about someone who avoided the limelight and who's work was secret. There are areas where I wanted more information about Virginia Hall's work, particularly at the start of the war while she was working with the British. The book discusses her network at length but doesn't really explain what she or her network was doing. I would have liked to have heard more about what the resistance and her group were specifically doing that thwarted the Nazis, but instead I got the impression that many of the people she was sent to work with were bumbling fools and most of her efforts were in getting them out of trouble.
There were some small issues I had with hearing this book as an audiobook. Chapters did not begin with the chapter titles being stated and there were times when it wasn't clear to me what year we were in and so that context was sometimes missing. As well, there are many people introduced who later have name changes and this was sometimes confusing (in a written book I would have easily flipped back and reread a passage to figure it out). As I said, these issues were small and not worth getting discouraged over.
The narration and sound editing of this audiobook were superb, probably the best I've ever heard. Juliet Stevenson's voice was clear but relaxed and her switching of accents and tone between narration and quotes was almost flawless. I could picture the paragraph breaks, font changes and punctuation on the page as she spoke. The volume was even throughout the book with not one sound of breath or unnecessary pause by the narrator. show less
Sonia Purnell does an excellent job of researching historical documents and interviewing subjects to piece together the story of Virginia Hall and bring her character and determination to life for the reader. By the end of the book I felt like I knew Virginia personally as someone I could relate to and admire. The story itself is interesting and inspiring, a young society lady ignores her family's wishes and aims for a career in diplomacy, comes up against a large amount of discrimination both as a woman and as someone with a disability, and becomes one of the best spies and organizers for the French resistance.
I appreciated the difficulty that show more Sonia Purnell must have had in gathering information about someone who avoided the limelight and who's work was secret. There are areas where I wanted more information about Virginia Hall's work, particularly at the start of the war while she was working with the British. The book discusses her network at length but doesn't really explain what she or her network was doing. I would have liked to have heard more about what the resistance and her group were specifically doing that thwarted the Nazis, but instead I got the impression that many of the people she was sent to work with were bumbling fools and most of her efforts were in getting them out of trouble.
There were some small issues I had with hearing this book as an audiobook. Chapters did not begin with the chapter titles being stated and there were times when it wasn't clear to me what year we were in and so that context was sometimes missing. As well, there are many people introduced who later have name changes and this was sometimes confusing (in a written book I would have easily flipped back and reread a passage to figure it out). As I said, these issues were small and not worth getting discouraged over.
The narration and sound editing of this audiobook were superb, probably the best I've ever heard. Juliet Stevenson's voice was clear but relaxed and her switching of accents and tone between narration and quotes was almost flawless. I could picture the paragraph breaks, font changes and punctuation on the page as she spoke. The volume was even throughout the book with not one sound of breath or unnecessary pause by the narrator. show less
Virginia Hall was a woman of great importance. Her undercover work in the Second World War marks her as one of the greatest spies in American history. The dangers she faced, the risks she took, and the hardships she endured all for the sake of helping the French Resistance are unparalleled. That being said, this book was a slog to get through. Poorly organized, with numerous characters and many code names, it was difficult to keep track of the characters and their actions. Though evidently well researched, I never really got to know the people in this book, including the main character, so little was actually said about the people. This should have been a gripping account of a fascinating woman. Instead, because of its dry narrative and show more over abundance of facts that overwhelmed the reader without grasping the heart of Virginia Hall, it was not. show less
Sonia Purnell's biography of Virginia Hall is truly compelling non-fiction reading. The majority of the work focuses on Hall's years as an SOE, and later OSS, agent working to coordinate the French Resistance during WWII. Virginia's work was truly amazing, particularly as she was constantly underestimated due to her gender. In addition, she had the added disadvantage of an artificial leg (affectionately known as Cuthbert), which meant that while participating in various Resistance activities, she never had the option of a last minute run if things got dicey. Purnell does an excellent job crafting summaries of Virginia's missions, based on a wide range of field reports, recollections, and other primary sources and also gives the reader a show more good sense of the personality behind the actions. An excellent read of a too often overlooked woman who played a massively important role in the war in France. Highly recommend, particularly for those interested in the period, the French Resistance, or women's history. show less
This is a fascinating exploration of the life of Virginia Hall: a woman who worked undercover for both British and American intelligence in occupied France during the Second World War. Most undercover agents had a very low life expectancy and most were men, but the multilingual Hall not only defied the statistical odds, she led whole groups of Resistance fighters, organised the breakout of a number of prisoners from the Mauzac internment camp, crossed the Pyrenees on foot, and frustrated the hell out of the Nazis—all while being an amputee and having to rely on an ill-fitten wooden leg she called “Cuthbert.”
Reading that paragraph should make you say “damn, what a badass”, and it is absolutely without doubt that Hall had show more nerves of steel and I would never want to go up against her in any kind of fight. Sonia Purnell clearly did her research here, mining archives in France, the UK, and the US, in order to reconstruct as fully as possible the career of a woman who steadfastly refused any public recognition during her lifetime.
However, as much as Purnell (and likely her editor/publishers) are clearly trying to frame Hall’s story as an almost cinematic one of an ass-kicking lone heroine who vanquishes Nazis and misogynists with equal aplomb, what I found the much more fascinating (if depressing) angle was how much Hall’s life and career are an example of what the women’s historian Judith Bennett has termed “patriarchal equilibrium”: the tendency of patriarchy to (re)assert itself over and over, with changes in women’s circumstances not resulting in transformation or in an overall change in their status with respect to that of men. More investigation of that might have deepened this book—but perhaps made it less appealing to a general audience. Equally, I would have been interested to see more of a grounding in a disability studies perspective, but ditto.
These points, coupled with some less than fully polished prose and some minor historical slips, means that this isn’t quite the biography that Virginia Hall deserves—but I am glad to have learned something about her life regardless.
(The audiobook is marred by the narrator’s tendency to lapse into bad accents when reading direct quotes from Americans, French people or Germans.) show less
Reading that paragraph should make you say “damn, what a badass”, and it is absolutely without doubt that Hall had show more nerves of steel and I would never want to go up against her in any kind of fight. Sonia Purnell clearly did her research here, mining archives in France, the UK, and the US, in order to reconstruct as fully as possible the career of a woman who steadfastly refused any public recognition during her lifetime.
However, as much as Purnell (and likely her editor/publishers) are clearly trying to frame Hall’s story as an almost cinematic one of an ass-kicking lone heroine who vanquishes Nazis and misogynists with equal aplomb, what I found the much more fascinating (if depressing) angle was how much Hall’s life and career are an example of what the women’s historian Judith Bennett has termed “patriarchal equilibrium”: the tendency of patriarchy to (re)assert itself over and over, with changes in women’s circumstances not resulting in transformation or in an overall change in their status with respect to that of men. More investigation of that might have deepened this book—but perhaps made it less appealing to a general audience. Equally, I would have been interested to see more of a grounding in a disability studies perspective, but ditto.
These points, coupled with some less than fully polished prose and some minor historical slips, means that this isn’t quite the biography that Virginia Hall deserves—but I am glad to have learned something about her life regardless.
(The audiobook is marred by the narrator’s tendency to lapse into bad accents when reading direct quotes from Americans, French people or Germans.) show less
A vivid history of an extremely courageous wartime hero and a woman who helped to win WW II.
I really enjoyed this audio book by Sonia Purnell, impeccably researched and a gripping and informative read.
By 1942 Virginia Hall was the Gestapo's most urgent target, having infiltrated Vichy command, trained civilians in guerrilla warfare and spung soldiers from Nazi prison camps. The first woman to go undercover for British SOE, her intelligence changed the course of the war.
You cant but be in awe of this woman's courage and commitment to her work, she was certainly a force to be reckoned with in a man's world and earned the respect of her comrades through her intelligence, courage and determination. This book reads like a thriller but is show more in fact a real life spy story and the author leaves no stone unturned in her detailed account of Hall's spy missions all over France.
I listened to this one on audible and had to google images and photos online which is the one drawback of audio as opposed to the actual book, but having said that the audio version is excellent and very well narrated.
A terrific read/listen and I wish I had a hard copy for my real life bookshelf. show less
I really enjoyed this audio book by Sonia Purnell, impeccably researched and a gripping and informative read.
By 1942 Virginia Hall was the Gestapo's most urgent target, having infiltrated Vichy command, trained civilians in guerrilla warfare and spung soldiers from Nazi prison camps. The first woman to go undercover for British SOE, her intelligence changed the course of the war.
You cant but be in awe of this woman's courage and commitment to her work, she was certainly a force to be reckoned with in a man's world and earned the respect of her comrades through her intelligence, courage and determination. This book reads like a thriller but is show more in fact a real life spy story and the author leaves no stone unturned in her detailed account of Hall's spy missions all over France.
I listened to this one on audible and had to google images and photos online which is the one drawback of audio as opposed to the actual book, but having said that the audio version is excellent and very well narrated.
A terrific read/listen and I wish I had a hard copy for my real life bookshelf. show less
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Author Information
6+ Works 3,081 Members
Sonia Purnell is a journalist known for her investigative skills. She began her career at The Economist Intelligence Unit before going on to edit a weekly financial magazine at only 25 years old. She has since worked for a number of newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent on Sunday and the London Evening Standard. It was show more during her time working for the Telegraph in Brussels in the early 1990s that Sonia worked with Boris Johnson, who later became the Mayor of London and the subject of Sonia¿s first book, Just Boris. In 2012 Aurum Press released Sonia's new ebook, Pedal Power: How Boris Johnson Failed London's Cyclists. Sonia¿s latest book, First Lady, explores the dynamics of the fascinating union between Clementine and Winston Churchill. From the personal and political upheavals of the Great War, through the Churchills¿ `wilderness years¿ in the 1930s, to Clementine¿s efforts to preserve her husband¿s health during the struggle against Hitler. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Awards
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII's Most Dangerous Spy
- Original title
- A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
- Alternate titles
- A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
- Original publication date
- 2019-03-28
- People/Characters
- Virginia Hall
- Important places
- France
- Important events
- World War II
- Epigraph
- The Resistance was a way of life. ... We see ourselves there utterly free ... as unknown and unknowable version of ourselves, the kind of people no one can ever find again, who existed only in relation to unique and terrible ... (show all)conditions ... to ghosts, or to the dead ... [Yet] I would call that moment of my life "Happiness."
—Jean Cassou, Toulouse Resistance leader and poet
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convicted Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls.
—Robert F. Kennedy - Dedication
- For Sue 1951-2017. Courage comes in many forms.
- First words
- [Prologue] France was falling.
Mrs. Barbara Hall had it all worked out.
[Epilogue] Virginia did not receive the recognition she deserved during her CIA career, but toward the end of her life there were signs that her legacy was becoming better understood. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)[Prologue] Even that, though, was not enough for her.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)When they talked with awe and affection of her incredible exploits, they smiled and looked up at the wide, open skies with "les etoiles dans les yeux."
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)[Epilogue] Virginia Hall is a legend on the Haute-Loire plateau to this day. - Publisher's editor
- Savitt, Sarah; Schulz, Andrea; Wunderlich, Emily
- Blurbers
- Mulley, Clare; Helm, Sarah; Waller, Douglas
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 940.548673092
Classifications
- Genres
- General Nonfiction, History, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 940.548673092 — History & geography History of Europe History of Europe 1918- Military history of World War II Other Topics Unconventional warfare of Allies
- LCC
- D810 .S8 .G597 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania History (General) World War II (1939-1945)
- BISAC
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- 2,174
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- 9,270
- Reviews
- 85
- Rating
- (4.03)
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- 6 — Czech, English, French, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese (Portugal)
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 29
- ASINs
- 9