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Jean Overton Fuller |
Jean Overton Fuller is a British author best known for her book Madeleine, the story of Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, GC, MBE, CdG, an Indian heroine of World War II.
Fuller graduated with honors [1] from the University of London.
Jean Overton Fuller is a personal friend of the Inayat Khan family. During World War II, she was employed by the British Postal Censorship Office in London. At the end of hostilities, she travelled extensively throughout Europe, interviewing various people connected with Noor's tragic, yet inspiring life.
The resultant publication, Madeleine, published by Victor Gollancz Ltd. in 1952, was re-published in 1988 by East-West Publications in Rotterdam. This updated version contains some chapters, which were eliminated from the original manuscript, such as an in-depth exploration of Tipu Sultan, Noor's ancestor.
Following the book's publication, Fuller continued extensive researches into the history of the wartime SOE French networks, interviewing many of the people involved - British and French, as well as Germans - in order to find who was responsible for betraying Noor and her fellow agents. Her results were published in the 1958 "Double Webs" (Putnam & Co).
Until the publication of Shrabani Basu's Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan (Sutton Publishing, 2006), Fuller's book was considered to be the definitive biography of Noor Inayat Khan.
Fuller has also written several other biographies, most notably of Sir Francis Bacon, and a book detailing her theory of Jack the Ripper's true identity being Walter Richard Sickert, an English painter.
Jean Overton Fuller's memoirs are due to be published in the early summer of 2007 by Michael Russell, Wilby, Norwich under the title "Driven To It, An Autobiography".