A Model Spy by John Rory Maclean COMING 12 FEB

Paperback
Mirror Books
12 February 2026

“Her activities for the last 10 years are certainly consistent with a high degree of espionage, although it has hitherto been impossible to say definitely that she is more than a widely travelled and remarkably well befriended adventuress.”

Espionage and couture are both about concealment.

A Model Spy is the never before told story of Gisela Klein, Germany’s secret weapon. A woman of brains, beauty and charm, who befriended everyone from members of the British Royal household to the man who should have been the President of the United States of America.

A self-professed “anti-Nazi” and a networker of genius, she was the first steady girlfriend of the serial philanderer and British member of Parliament Jack Profumo. She was an intelligence asset for Germany in the 1930s who camouflaged her own link to Adolf Hitler’s second in command, Herman Goering.

She wasn’t a full time spy, the tall green-eyed, blond-haired Gisela had a glittering career as an international model and was at the core of Nazi attempts to use fashion as a weapon of culture and a source of hard currency for the armaments Hitler needed.

In 1935 the MP Nancy Astor told people her beautiful guest AT Cliveden was a spy.

In 1938 MI5 tried but failed to arrest her. Only in 1944, as the allies fought their way towards Germany, would the Bletchley Park codebreakers provide clear evidence of her shrouded role for German military intelligence, the Abwehr.

Gisela Klein weaves her way through the turbulent history of the 1930s and 1940s via London, Paris, Cairo, St Moritz, Cannes, New York, Berlin and Vienna as she combines intelligence gathering with couture.