It was, among others, thanks to her that Polish detainees from Hungarian camps were able to escape to serve in Polish armed forces in the West. She was killed in very suspicious circumstances at the age of 44, ‘Countess stabbed to death in London,’ wrote the New York Times. However, the living conditions there proved difficult, and Giżycki himself was mercurial, eccentric and despotic. Jan Larecki, Krystyna Skarbek, Agentka o wielu twarzach (Krystyna Skarbek, Agent of Many Faces), 2008, ISBN 978-83-05-13533-7.

It is a distinction between Hayden White’s ‘truth’, that historical veracity that historians seek, and the ‘authenticity’ of the reality of history that gives an impression of accuracy, or how readers believe in such a representation of the past. Churchill recruited the young bride into Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE), the first female British agent to serve in the field and the longest-serving of all Britain's wartime women agents. She feigned symptoms of pulmonary tuberculosis by biting her tongue until it bled and a doctor diagnosed her incorrectly with terminal tuberculosis.Krystyna did not want petty jobs, but she was unpopular with both the British and Polish intelligence agencies at the time. Not long after their marriage they embarked on their travels which took them to Africa where Gizycki would hold a post in the Polish consulate of Addis Ababa. c] Another source of suspicion was the ease with which she had obtained transit visas through French-mandated Syria and Lebanon from the pro- Vichy French consul in Istanbul.

In 1941 she began using the alias Christine Granville, a name she legally adopted upon naturalisation as a British subject in December 1946. With nerves of steel, she approached the German police as a British agent and niece of General Montgomery, claiming to have the authority to secure their release or else, threatening the Gestapo that they would face reprisals if her agents were executed as the British offensive was imminent. Her father was Count Jerzy Skarbek, and young Krystyna excelled at languages, horseback riding, shooting, and playing with knives. She turned down offers of office work and continued to be sidelined from the kind of dangerous and difficult work she desired. Nolan claimed that Ian Fleming, in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), modelled Vesper Lynd on Christine Granville.and dashing men", The Spy Who Loved, by Clare Mulley: review by Nigel Jones, The Telegraph, Saturday, 14 July 2012.