Noor Inayat Khan wartime heroine

A beautiful Indian princess, she  sacrificed her life for Britain as a  wartime secret agent.

With astonishing courage, Noor Inayat Khan evaded the Gestapo before being betrayed, tortured and, after refusing to reveal any information, executed at Dachau concentration camp, Her last word as the firing squad raised their weapons on September 13, 1944, was 'liberté'.

The bronze bust commemorating Britain’s only female Muslim war heroine is the first stand-alone memorial to an Asian woman in the UK.

It stands in Gordon Square near the house where Noor lived and from where she left on her last mission, unable to tell her mother she might never return.

Noor was part of an elite band of women in the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the first woman radio operator to be flown into occupied France to aid the Resistance.

Born in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother, Noor was a descendant of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of Mysore. The family lived in London, moving to Paris when Noor was six. Source: www.pippaettore.com