A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of Virginia Hall, WWII’s Most Dangerous Spy

Code names: Marie, Germaine, Philomène, Nicolas, Diane, Marcelle, Brigitte, Isabelle, Camille, DFV, Artemis

Virginia Hall is the titular figure in A Woman of No Importance. Born in Maryland in 1906, Virginia resisted the gender expectations of early 20th-century America—in particular, her mother’s encouragement to marry into money. She was free-spirited and longed for adventure. She lost part of her leg in a hunting accident. Undeterred, Virginia went to Paris where she was disturbed by the rise of fascism. She soon rose through the ranks of the United Kingdom’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as an elite spy, proving herself to be brave, resourceful, intelligent, and patriotic. By the end of the war, she was a legendary—and legendarily successful—figure among her followers and her superiors, but she consistently shied away from fame, considering the purpose she had found as an agent its own reward. She finished her career with the CIA, although postwar, she primarily served in unfulfilling, repetitive data analysis work. Her eventual husband, Paul Goillot, was a fellow OSS agent. She died in 1982 after years of health problems stemming in part from her wartime service.