Why am I passionate about this?

Clare Mulley is the award-winning author of three books re-examining the history of the First and Second World War through the lives of remarkable women. The Woman Who Saved the Children, about child rights pioneer Eglantyne Jebb, won the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize and is now under option. Polish-born Second World War special agent Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, is the subject of the Spy Who Loved, a book that led to Clare being decorated with Polandā€™s national honour, the Bene Merito. Clare's third book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, long-listed for the Historical Writers Association prize, tells the extraordinary story of Nazi Germanyā€™s only two female test pilots, whose choices and actions put them on opposite sides of history. Clare reviews for the Telegraph, Spectator, and History Today. A popular public speaker, she has given a TEDx talk at Stormont, and recent TV includes news appearances for the BBC, Sky, and Channel 5 as well as various Second World War history series.


I wrote

The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry

By Clare Mulley,

Book cover of The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry

What is my book about?

The Women Who Flew For Hitler tells the extraordinary story of the only two women to serve Nazi Germany asā€¦

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of A Spitfire Girl: One of the World's Greatest Female Ata Ferry Pilots Tells Her Story

Clare Mulley Why did I love this book?

There are several fascinating memoirs by ATA pilots including those by Diana Barnato Walker and the fittingly named Nancy Bird, but I was lucky enough to know Mary Ellis so her words speak most directly to me. A life recounted in sensible tones, reading this book it is easy to imagine you are settled into an armchair across from Mary, while at the same time realising that she would be much more comfortable in the cockpit of a Spitfire. By the end of the war she had delivered 400 Spitfires and flown 72 different types of aircraft. ā€˜Who needs loveā€™, Ellis wrote, ā€˜when there is the ultimate thrill of speed, the sky, and the orgasmic experience of piloting the best fighter aircraft in the world?ā€™ Enough said.

By Mary Ellis, Melody Foreman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Spitfire Girl as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

We visualise dashing and daring young men as the epitome of the pilots of the Second World War, yet amongst that elite corps was one person who flew no less than 400 Spitfires and seventy-six different types of aircraft and that person was Mary Wilkins.

Her story is one of the most remarkable and endearing of the war, as this young woman, serving as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary, transported aircraft for the RAF, including fast fighter planes and huge four-engine bombers. On one occasion Mary delivered a Wellington bomber to an airfield, and as she climbedā€¦


Book cover of Spitfire Women Of World War II

Clare Mulley Why did I love this book?

A highly readable history of the courageous female ā€˜ferry pilots' of the ATA who came from all over the world to help the Allied cause, vividly told through numerous interviews woven together. When first published, this book really helped to put female pilots back in to the Allied wartime story where they so firmly belong.

By Giles Whittell,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Spitfire Women Of World War II as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The story of the unsung heroines who flew the newest, fastest, aeroplanes in World War II - mostly in southern England where the RAF was desperately short of pilots.

Why would the well-bred daughter of a New England factory-owner brave the U-boat blockades of the North Atlantic in the bitter winter of 1941? What made a South African diamond heiress give up her life of house parties and London balls to spend the war in a freezing barracks on the Solent? And why did young Margaret Frost start lying to her father during the Battle of Britain?

They - andā€¦


Ad

Book cover of I Meant to Tell You

I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne,

When Mirandaā€™s fiancĆ©, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorneyā€™s office, the couple joke that Mirandaā€™s parentsā€™ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russā€™s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russā€™s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested forā€¦

Book cover of Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler''s Aces

Clare Mulley Why did I love this book?

This is a gripping history of the Soviet female fighter, bomber and night bomber squadron pilots told through their interwoven biographies. These were the women who fought and died in the skies above Stalingrad and Kursk, and whose skills, as well as courage, astounded and terrified the Luftwaffe. Although invited to train and serve alongside their male comrades, the women were of course given uniforms and equipment designed for men, plenty of hostility, and a place, for those who survived, only at the back of the victory parades.

By Lyuba Vinogradova,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Defending the Motherland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Plucked from every background and led by an NKVD Major, the new recruits who boarded a train in Moscow on October 16, 1941, to go to war had much in common with millions of others across the world. What made the members of the 586th Fighter Regiment, the 587th Heavy-Bomber Regiment, and the 588th Regiment of light night-bombers unique was their gender: the Soviet Union was creating the first all-female active combat units in modern history.

Drawing on original interviews with surviving airwomen, Lyuba Vinogradova weaves together the untold stories of the female Soviet fighter pilots of the Second Worldā€¦


Book cover of Last Flight - Amelia Earhart's Flying Adventures

Clare Mulley Why did I love this book?

There are several good biographies of Earhart by Mary S. Lovell and others, but worth also looking at is this compilation of the letters, diary entries and charts that Earhart sent back to her husband, bringing a striking immediacy to her final flight.

By Amelia Earhart,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Last Flight - Amelia Earhart's Flying Adventures as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Amelia Earhart was twice the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air: initially in 1928 as a passenger just a year after Lindbergh's pioneering flight and then in 1932 flying solo. Like her contemporaries Amy Johnson and Beryl Markham she was featured in all the fashionable magazines of the day as a symbol of the new independent woman. The list of records Amelia established reads like a catalogue of aviation history and includes the first flights from Hawaii to California and from California to Mexico. In 1937 she attempted with a copilot, Frederick J. Noonan, to fly around theā€¦


Ad

Book cover of The Forest Knights

The Forest Knights by J. K. Swift,

The greatest underdog story of the medieval age.

A wild land too mountainous to be tamed by plows. A duke of the empire, his cunning overshadowed only by his ambitions. A young priestess of the Old Religion, together with a charismatic outlaw, sparking a rebellion from deep within the forests.ā€¦

Book cover of Women Who Fly: Goddesses, Witches, Mystics, and Other Airborne Females

Clare Mulley Why did I love this book?

This is a left-of-field choice, but when thinking about female fliers it is worth remembering the cultural baggage they inevitably carry with them. Historically, female flight whether by broom, wing, mental transcendence or in the cockpit of a Spitfire, has threatened the patriarchy while liberating women. Even today, ā€˜flightyā€™ women are still considered in negative terms. This book explores the power and prejudice around aerial females.

By Serenity Young,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Women Who Fly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the asparas of Hindu myth to the swan maidens of European fairy tales, tales of flying women-some with wings, others with clouds, rainbows, floating scarves, or flying horses-reveal both fascination with and ambivalence about female power and sexuality. In Women Who Fly, Serinity Young examines the motif of flying women as it appears in a wide variety of cultures and historical periods, expressed in legends, myths, rituals, sacred narratives, and
artistic productions. She covers a wide range of themes, including supernatural women, like the Valkyries, who transport men to immortality; winged goddesses like Iris and the Greek goddess Nike;ā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry

By Clare Mulley,

Book cover of The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry

What is my book about?

The Women Who Flew For Hitler tells the extraordinary story of the only two women to serve Nazi Germany as test pilots, both of whom received the Iron Cross, yet who ended their lives on opposite sides of history. Brilliant pilot Hanna Reitsch was the worldā€™s first woman to fly a helicopter, and later tested rocket planes and even a manned version of a prototype cruise missile - the V1 flying bomb or doodlebug. A fanatical Nazi, in the last days of the war she begged Hitler to let her fly him to safety from his Berlin bunker. Her nemesis, Melitta von Stauffenberg, an exceptional aeronautical engineer and test pilot for the Stuka dive bombers that were synonymous with the Blitzkrieg, was secretly part Jewish. In July 1944 Melitta was at the heart of the most famous attempt on Hitler's life, the Valkyrie bomb plot.

Book cover of A Spitfire Girl: One of the World's Greatest Female Ata Ferry Pilots Tells Her Story
Book cover of Spitfire Women Of World War II
Book cover of Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler''s Aces

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,885

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

šŸ“š You might also likeā€¦

Book cover of Beneath the Stairs

Beneath the Stairs by Jennifer Fawcett,

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric ā€œnail-biter of a novelā€ (Shelf Awareness), a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at an alleged haunted houseā€”the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.

Few in sleepy Sumnerā€™s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon Houseā€¦

Book cover of Captain James Heron First Into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

Captain James Heron First Into the Fray by Patrick G. Cox,

Captain Heron finds himself embroiled in a conflict that threatens to bring down the world order he is sworn to defend when a secretive Consortium seeks to undermine the World Treaty Organisation and the democracies it represents as he oversees the building and commissioning of a new starship.

When theā€¦

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in pilots, women, and the Soviet Union?

Pilots 47 books
Women 661 books
The Soviet Union 381 books