WW2 spy Violette Szabo's medals 'should stay in UK'

Violette Szabo was murdered at Ravensbruck concentration camp

Gallantry medals won by a British secret agent in World War Two should be bought for the country, the founder of a museum set up in her name has said.

Violette Szabo was captured days after the D-Day landings and later killed.

A Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, her story was turned into a 1958 film Carve Her Name with Pride starring Virginia McKenna.

The medals, currently on display at the Violette Szabo museum in Herefordshire, are being auctioned on Wednesday.

The five medals, including a posthumously awarded George Cross and French Croix De Guerre, are expected to raise up to £300,000.

Rosemary Rigby, who founded the museum at Szabo's childhood holiday home at Wormelow, said they deserved to stay in the UK.

Violette Szabo, hero of the Resistance

She was born in Paris in 1921 to an English father and French mother and moved to England with her family.

At the outbreak of war she joined the land army, but enlisted with the SOE after the death of her French husband in 1942.

Speaking fluent French she was trained as a field agent to work alongside the Resistance.

In 1944, she was captured trying to disrupt the German response to the D-Day landings and was later shot at Ravensbruck concentration camp at the age of 23.

She is one of only four women to be awarded the George Cross, since its establishment in 1940.

She said the medals had been "so hard won" and it was important they stayed on display in the country "she fought and died for".

Miss Rigby said she hoped a private benefactor would come forward.

She said it had been a "terrible shock" to learn of the secret agent's daughter Tania Szabo's intention to sell the medals, but she understood the move.

The medals include a George Cross and French Croix de Guerre