Popular Culture
Skarbek became a legend in her lifetime. Soon after her death, she entered the realm of popular culture. It has been said that Ian Fleming, in his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), modeled Vesper Lynd on her. According to William F. Nolan, Fleming also based Tatiana Romanova, in his 1957 novel From Russia, with Love, on Skarbek.
Four decades later, in 1999, Polish writer Maria Nurowska published a novel, Miłośnica (The Lover)—an account of a fictional female journalist's attempt to probe Skarbek's story.
There have been three published biographies of Skarbek:
- Madeleine Masson, Christine: a Search for Christine Granville, OBE, GM, Croix de Guerre (1975, republished 2005);
- Jan Larecki, Krystyna Skarbek, Agentka o wielu twarzach (Krystyna Skarbek, Agent of Many Faces, 2008); and
- Clare Mulley, The Spy Who Loved: the Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, Britain's First Special Agent of World War II (2012).
A Polish television series was announced by that country's public broadcasting corporation, Telewizja Polska (Polish Television).
The 5 February 2009 Krakow Post reported that Agnieszka Holland was to direct a big-budget film about Skarbek—Christine: War My Love.
Read more about this topic: Krystyna Skarbek
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’ve finally figured out why soap operas are, and logically should be, so popular with generations of housebound women. They are the only place in our culture where grown-up men take seriously all the things that grown-up women have to deal with all day long.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)