Noor Inayat Khan

1 portrait of Noor Inayat Khan

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Noor Inayat Khan

by Unknown photographer
modern bromide print from original negative, 1937
7 in. x 9 3/8 in. (177 mm x 237 mm) image size
Given by Nekbakht Foundation, 2015
Photographs Collection
NPG x199215

On display in Room 27 on Floor 2 at the National Portrait Gallery

Sitterback to top

  • Noor Inayat Khan (1914-1944), Special Operations Executive agent, member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). Sitter in 2 portraits.

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  • 100 Pioneering Women, p. 107 Read entry

    Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914-44) was a special operations officer, a wartime secret agent. Born in Moscow, of Indian-American descent, her family moved to London, then Paris, where she was educated and became a writer of children’s stories. In 1940, she left Nazi-occupied France for England and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. In 1942, she was recruited by Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and became the first female wireless operator infiltrated into Occupied France. Codenamed Madeleine, she flew to France in 1943, working with the Prosper Resistance network in Paris. Despite the arrests of some members of the network thereafter, she remained in post. In the autumn of 1943, she was betrayed and captured by the Gestapo, who had located her messages and codes. After her brief escape and recapture, she was tortured – but revealed nothing. In 1944, she was executed at Dachau concentration camp. She was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the French Croix de Guerre for her war service and heroism. A memorial to her, unveiled in Gordon Square Gardens, London, in 2012, honours her enormous courage and sacrifice.

  • Lydia Miller; Samira Ahmed, Inspirational Women: Rediscovering stories in Art, Science and Social Reform, 2022, p. 133

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Current affairs

George VI becomes king. The younger brother of Edward VIII was crowned on the 12th May and the coronation was broadcast to Britain and the Empire on the radio. Edward becomes the Duke of Windsor, although the rank of 'Royal Highness' is not extended to Wallis Simpson.
Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister following Baldwin's retirement.

Art and science

Roland Penrose organises a tour of Picasso's painting Guernica to the UK. The painting, which shows the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, went on display at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in East London

International

Commercial airship travel is brought to an end with the 'Hindenberg Disaster'. The German airship exploded while landing in New Jersey. The radio broadcaster Herbert Morrison's reaction has become legendary: 'Oh, the humanity!'
Japan invades China, killing about 25,000. Japanese Troops committed numerous atrocities against soldiers and civilians in what became known as the 'Rape of Nanking'.

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