We are back for our second installment on knitting and espionage with Pippa Latour's memoir, The Last Secret Agent: My Life as a Spy Behind Nazi Lines. First a disclaimer: knitting stands out only as the most normal, ordinary thing in the extraordinary life of Pippa Latour, and it plays a critical, albeit small, part in her life as an Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent. Pippa Latour is above all a survivor--when she died in 2023 at the age of 102, she literally was the last surviving secret agent who served during World War II.

What's perhaps most surprising is how her life before the war perfectly prepared her for being a spy. With a French father and English mother, she grew up in Africa speaking many languages (Swahili, French and English). She was also used to hardship, loss and violence--her father died when she was four ...