The Face of Eve is a work of fiction but it is based on fact.
The Priory Finishing School and The House by the Sea are modelled on various houses on the Beaulieu estate in Hampshire, which were used for the training of SOE agents.
The FiFi, or ‘courtesans with good manners’, existed, and although mentioned by Professor Michael Foot in a definitive history of the SOE, like so much of women’s history, the detail is lost. Whilst writing this novel I discovered an ex-FiFi living in France, but she wasn’t willing to talk. Who could blame her sixty years on?
There was a haven for the crowned heads of Europe in Southsea during the Second World War.
The Duchess of Windsor did express a hope that she might take up designing clothes, and when she and the Duke packed to take up residence in the Bahamas, among the items they took with them was a sewing machine.
DB’s work as an SOE agent was like that of opera singer Diana de Rosso, who successfully carried message ‘dots’ in musical scores.
As for Dimitri’s provenance – a Red Army officer did work with SOE.
Betty Burton, March 2001