War heroine statue

There has been an honour for a woman who fought fascism.

Noor Inayat Khan was a British spy during World War Two and was sent to work in France in 1943.

But she was captured and killed by the Germans. She was just 30 years old.

Today she became the first Muslim woman in Britain to have a statue of her unveiled by Princess Anne.

Shrabani Basu at the Noor Inayat Khan Memorial Trust said: "Her story had been forgotten."

But she added that after she wrote a book about the Indian princess, her readers suggested there should be a memorial for Noor.

A statue commemorating Britain's only female Muslim war heroine will become the first stand-alone memorial to an Asian woman in the UK when it is unveiled today.

Second-world-war spy Noor Inayat Khan was sent into France by Winston Churchill's secret Special Operations Executive (SOE) in June 1943.

But she was betrayed and captured a few months later. She was shot by the SS in Dachau in September 1944, aged 30, and was posthumously awarded the George Cross as, as well as the Croix de Guerre by France. She was one of only three women in the SOE to be awarded the George Cross.