London, Aug 31: British Queen Camilla has unveiled a portrait of Noor Inayat Khan, an Indian-origin spy and descendant of Tipu Sultan at the Royal Air Force (RAF) Club in London.
The portrait now hangs opposite the stained glass window, which highlights the roles of Women in the RAF since its inception in 1918, and was inaugurated by the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2018.
Queen Camilla also formally named the room in the club as the “Noor Inayat Khan Room”.
During the visit, she met Shaik Mahmood, Noor Inayat Khan’s cousin, before unveiling the portrait by Paul Brason, a former President of the Society of Portrait Painters. The 76-year-old senior Royal was also presented with a book, “The Spy Princess — The Life of Noor Inayat Khan”, a biography of Noor Khan, by the author Shrabani Basu.
Noor was born on January 1, 1914 in a monastery just outside the Kremlin in Moscow to Sufi preacher Hazrat Inayat Khan and American mother, Ora Ray Baker. She was recruited in 1943 from the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) to Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). (IANS)
