Violette Szabo - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Her wartime activities in German-occupied France were dramatised in the film Carve Her Name with Pride, starring Virginia McKenna and based on the 1956 book of the same name by R. J. Minney. Whilst in the SOE, she met Leo Marks, codes officer of the SOE, who gave her what is now thought of as the definitive World War II poem code, The Life That I Have. The Video game Velvet Assassin by Replay Studios is inspired by Szabo's life as an allied spy during the Second World War, with the protagonist sharing her first name. Howard Brenton's play Hitler Dances caused some controversy by depicting Szabo as more of a real and vulnerable woman, rather than the heroic, patriotic archetype of Carve Her Name with Pride.

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