"A Time When I Still Thought It Was Possible for a Girl to Do Anything"

"It was through the subsequent series that I came to fall in love with her. Her origin story emanated from one of O'Donnell's experiences in World War II. Working in a small radio detachment near the Caucasus, on the border of Iran and Iraq, he had come across a young girl, 11 or 12 years old, walking along the banks of a stream. She was completely alone, dressed in rags, and carrying a small homemade weapon: a piece of wood with a nail driven through it. O'Donnell gave her tins of food, a can opener, and a cup of tea. She smiled in gratitude and then resumed her solo, dangerous wanderings. He remembered the young girl when he created Modesty, because he realized that the kind of character he wanted to invent could not have sprung from any of the girl-shaping institutions of mid-century Britain. She couldn't come 'from a shop or an office or school or nunnery,' he said, and 'be what I wanted this girl to be.'"

Caitlin Flanagan at The Atlantic praises Modesty Blaise.