Wanborough Manor, Surrey

This was one of 41 aristocratic homes across England and Scotland taken over by the SOE to prepare agents.

Here the emphasis was on physical and military training: Noor was taught how to shoot, throw grenades and handle explosives, as well as map-reading, assembling Allied and German weapons, and using Morse code.

Agents were closely watched to see how they behaved when they drank alcohol, whether they gambled – as they carried large sums of money undercover – and even whether they talked in their sleep.

Thame Park, Oxfordshire

In March 1943 Noor was sent here for specialist signals training. She was the first woman ever to be selected for this course.

Agents learned:

• How their wireless set worked and how to repair it
• Wavelengths, radio jamming and how bad weather could garble messages
• How to encode and decode messages
• How to set up aerials where they wouldn’t be seen
• How to avoid the radio detection vans that patrolled the streets, narrowing down the location of an agent’s radio while it was in use

Beaulieu, New Forest, Hampshire

Known as ‘The Finishing School’, Beaulieu taught recruits how to survive behind enemy lines, including:

• Recognising enemy uniforms
• Working out whether you were being followed and how to evade people
• How to act when being searched or questioned
• Contacting a source and passing messages
• Housebreaking and burglary
• Acting like a French person, from table manners and local slang to fashion and hairstyles, knowing current curfew times, rationing, etc.