This is the incredible true story of Elżbieta Zawacka, the WW2 resistance fighter known as ‘Zo’.
The only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, Zo undertook two missions in the capital before secret Special Operations Executive training in the British countryside.
As the only female member of the Polish elite Special Forces — the SOE-affiliated ‘Silent Unseen’ — Zo became the only woman to parachute from Britain to Nazi German-occupied Poland.
There, whilst being hunted by the Gestapo (who arrested her entire family), she played a key role in the Warsaw Uprising and ultimately in the liberation of Poland.
After the war, Zo was demobbed as one of the most highly decorated women in Polish history. Yet the Soviet-backed post-war Communist regime not only imprisoned her but ensured that her remarkable story remained hidden for over 40 years.
Through new archival research and exclusive interviews with people who knew and fought alongside Zo, Clare Mulley brings this forgotten hero back to life, transforming the way we see female agency in the Second World War.
Agent Zo by Clare Mulley is published in paperback on 20 March, 2025.
Read Carolyn Kirby’s interview with Clare about researching this book.
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