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I am fascinated by the little gaps in history.
I became interested in the subject when…
I came across a leaflet called ‘A Starving Baby’, made by the social reformer Eglantyne Jebb (1876-1928), who was campaigning to end the economic blockade causing starvation in Europe after the end of WWI. She was arrested and conducted her own defence in court. Technically, she hadn’t cleared these leaflets with the government censors, so she focused on the moral case. In the end, she was fined just £5, and afterwards the Crown prosecutor himself pressed a £5 note into her hands. ‘No thank you, I’ll pay my own fine,’ she replied – but she did take his £5 and put it towards a new fund, and that was the first ever donation to Save the Children. I thought, why don’t we know that story? So I wrote my first book, which was a biography of Eglantyne called The Woman Who Saved the Children.
Growing up I was fascinated by…
Just about everything! I was an aspiring punk; I was shaking a bucket for the miners’ strike; and the museum in St Albans had some Roman tiles from Verulamium, with cat pawprints on, which really spoke to me. My mum and dad both had childhood collections of shrapnel from WWII, and I was fascinated by those, too.
My favourite period or conflict…
I don’t have a favourite conflict because I loathe all conflicts. But I am fascinated by the little gaps in history, particularly in recent history, which often show where selections have been made about the history we choose to look at, and that in itself is fascinating. My focus as a historian is on female experience in the Second World War, and there are plenty of gaps there for me to explore.
The figure I most admire…
I’m not interested in the ‘great man’ view of history, but I do think it’s helpful to have a relatable person-sized doorway into the past. I admire the courage and achievements of many of the women I’ve written about – including the freedom fighter Elzbieta Zawacka (1909-2009), who was the subject of my recent book Agent Zo. She was the only woman to parachute into German-occupied Poland during WWII, and the work she did saved thousands of lives.
My dream dinner party…
I’d invite everyone I’m going to write about in the future, because I want to ask them questions. But also people I’ve written about in the past: Eglantyne Jebb, Elzbieta Zawacka, and Melitta von Stauffenberg (1903-1945), one of only two female test pilots for the Nazi Third Reich, who was also secretly Jewish, and in the Resistance, and who tried to kill Hitler. I don’t really want to invite them round for dinner, though, because I’m a terrible cook!
A novel I’d recommend…
Middlemarch by George Eliot, because it is my favourite book ever. But also The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. It’s a story of love and survival in post-war Holland, a country that was still very much in denial about its past. A brilliant book.
My favourite war film…
Kanał (1957) by Andrzej Wajda. It’s part of his Polish trilogy, and focuses on the Home Army fighters escaping through the sewers during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. It’s a really beautiful, tragic film, depicting both female and male heroism. It was produced in the Communist era, but it is amazingly free of Communist propaganda: an incredibly brave film to make at that time. My other choice would be The Sound of Music (1965) – because I just love it, and it is a war film!
A museum to get lost in…
There are so many: the Imperial War Museum Duxford; the Warsaw Uprising Museum and the Jewish museum in Warsaw; the Uffizi in Florence; the Black Country Living Museum… and many, many more! I also love little museums, like the Old Operating Theatre in London, and temporary exhibitions are worth mentioning too – there’s one called Our Boys, about the 450,000 Polish soldiers made to fight for the Third Reich, which is at the Museum of Gdansk (until 10 May 2026). It is really fascinating, done with great sensitivity, and very thought-provoking.
My next project…
I have just drafted the very first words of my next book, which also revolves around a woman in the Second World War, but from a completely different angle. I can’t really say much more, but I am incredibly excited to tell this story. Meanwhile, Agent Zo has won the Polish Foreign Ministry’s History Book Prize, so I’m off to Warsaw to pick that up!
Clare Mulley is an award-winning author focused on female experiences, primarily during the Second World War. She has written several books about notable women, and her most recent work, Agent Zo: the untold story of courageous WW2 resistance fighter Elżbieta Zawacka (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), won the silver prize in the 2025 MHM Book Awards.
Images: J P Masclet; Palmer Clarke Archive, Cambridgeshire Collection; Zespół Filmowy Kadr; Christine Matthews
