Miss May, The Story of an Englishwoman (Signed copy)

Signed by SOE agent and gulag-survivor Mary Allison Miske (Miss May)

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Printing Details

First edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 20 × 13.5cm, 191pp.

This copy has been signed and dedicated by the subject of the book, Mary Allison Miske, to the half title, "To my nice Russian teacher—with thanks for all the trouble he has taken. Mary Allison Miske 'Miss May'".

The remarkable story of Mary Allison. She went to work in Hungary in the 1920s, married Baron Jeno Miske, and stayed there when war broke out. She was arrested and imprisoned for 13 months by the Gestapo (she was an SOE agent and smuggled secret documents into Hungary) but was sent back to England in 1943 during a spy-swap. She returned to learn the fate of her husband (he had committed suicide) but when visiting his grave was arrested by the Russian secret police for working for British Intelligence and spent the next nine years in a Russian gulag in the middle of the frozen arctic, which takes up the majority of this book. She survived that hardship and died in Surrey aged 86. Jerrard Tickell had met her first in Hungary in 1924.

Condition

A very good copy. The book is in good clean shape with secure binding. The dustwrapper has some light marking and creasing, but has not been price-clipped and is now within a protective sleeve.

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