Clare Mulley is an award-winning author and broadcaster. Her first book, The Woman Who Saved the Children, won the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize, and The Spy Who Loved led to Clare being decorated with Poland’s national honour, the Bene Merito. Clare’s third book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, tells the extraordinary story of two women at the heart of Nazi Germany, whose choices put them on opposite sides of history, and was long-listed for the Historic Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown. Clare reviews non-fiction for the Spectator and Telegraph. Learn more at https://claremulley.com/
1. How and when did you get hooked on history?
Since I saw the worn stone steps outside a farmhouse as a child, and learnt that this was caused by the women and men, children and probably animals, walking through the same doorway for centuries. That threshold still has its grip on me.
2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?
My first book was a biography of Eglantyne Jebb, the remarkable founder of Save the Children and champion of children's human rights, who was not fond of individual children yet permanently changed the way the world both regards and treats the younger generations. I was working for Save the Children as a fundraiser when I came across her inspiring story, heard about her public arrest, her passion and compassion. The book, called The Woman Who Saved the Children, later won the Daily Mail Biographers Club prize, and turned me into an author. All royalties from that book go to Save the Children, but I now make my living from writing… and my eldest daughter is called Eglantyne after this great woman - although only as her middle name! So even just this particular history alone has had a huge impact on my life!
3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?
I am not exactly sure what qualifies someone to be a historian. When I started researching my book on Eglantyne Jebb I took a history Masters degree, writing almost every essay on my subject! Although I have not gone on to get a Doctorate, I have now published three non-fiction history books. After The Woman Who Saved the Children, came my biography of Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, The Spy Who Loved. Granville was the first woman to serve Britain as a special agent in the Second World War. She worked in three different theatres of the conflict, escaping arrest in Nazi-occupied Poland before being parachuted behind enemy lines in France, were she secured the defection of an entire German garrison and saved the lives of several of her male colleagues among other achievements. Awarded the OBE, George Medal and French Croix de Guerre, she was reportedly also Churchill’s ‘favourite spy’. Researching this book dominated my life for two years, and Granville has never left me - I unveiled an English Heritage Blue Plaque for her last year.
Deciding to take a different perspective on the war, my last book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, looked at the intertwined lives of the only to women to serve the Third Reich as test pilots, one of whom was a fanatical Nazi, while the other secretly had Jewish ancestry and became involved in the most famous attempt on Hitler's life. I am now working on my next book - but this is still under wraps. Needless to say, history has not only been core to my professional life for the last decade or more, it also seeps into much of the rest of my life too, be it the stories I share with my daughters, the places I choose to holiday, and even, sometimes, the narratives of my dreams!
5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?
The obvious answer to this is the history of women engaging with and responding to the First and Second World Wars. However, in truth I am fascinated by all recorded history, from handprints on cave walls onwards. I love to learn from experts in other periods and areas, and am often inspired by both the evident similarities and differences that distinguish human history across time and place.
6. Your work, books, articles, and reviews, mostly revolves around women during World War II, extraordinary women who are pretty much left out of general history. What attracts you to their stories and how much more difficult is it to research their stories?
There is still a rich seam of untold women’s stories across history, including what is sometimes called 'military history'. The First and Second World Wars both to some extent subverted usual gender norms, enabling British women not only to serve on the Home Front but also to take roles at the frontline or even behind enemy lines. The expediency of war is a great leveller, and it is always fascinating looking at such moments of great social change. For Polish women, the Home Front quickly was the frontline, and many served within their military as pilots, drivers and soldiers. Soviet women were also recruited into frontline service as fighter and bomber pilots, tank drivers, snipers and machine gunners. Yet stories such as these have received relatively little attention, or are still told through a glamourising lens: the women discussed in terms of their beauty and courage, rather than their achievements. It has been a privilege, as well as a great adventure, to research and write some of this history from a fresh perspective. This is not just 'women’s history', it is shared history, and sheds light not only on female endeavour but on diversity in terms of nationality, race, faith, age and physical ability, and also on the 'male experience' of war!
Regarding researching women’s stories, there tends to be less material on the women who served in the archives, even proportionally, although there is now an increasing will to capture and retain more of this. Conversely however, I have sometimes found more material on the women kept with families, such as personal diaries, letters and other documents. I once found a document on a servicewoman marked ‘file as domestic’, which is pretty telling in itself!
7. You also review books for numerous publications. From your point of view as a reviewer, what makes for a successful history book?
I enjoy reviewing, and this year I am also Chair of the judges for the Historical Writers Association Non-Fiction Crown prize, which has been like being part of the best - and most intense - book club ever. Different book prizes may look for different qualities, such as how accessible a book is, or how deep the research or fresh the perspective. I am interested in all these things, as well as the the basics such as fine, fluent writing, but I think it is also important to judge each book on its own terms. At the end of the day, what is really needed is multiple perspectives on the various subjects. I am always suspicious of any book that claims to be the definitive authority on any subject!
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