The poem, 'The Life That I Have', also known as 'Yours', recited to Violette by her husband Etienne, was once believed to have been written especially for the film, but was in fact the actual code poem given to her in March 1944 by the SOE cryptographer Leo Marks, and written by him on Christmas Eve 1943 in memory of his girlfriend, Ruth, who had recently died in a car crash.
•
(An uncredited Michael Caine plays the prisoner who leans forward and calls to Szabo for water; in real life, that was the war hero F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas, as recorded by Leo Marks in Chapter 76 of his book Between Silk and Cyanide).
•
The film includes the reading of the poem The Life That I Have, written by Leo Marks and given to Szabo as she left for a mission in Nazi-occupied France.
The Webster Boy (1962) is an Irish film directed by Don Chaffey and written by Ted Allan and Leo Marks.
Leo Tolstoy | Pope Leo XIII | Marks & Spencer | Leo Gorcey | Leo Burnett | Leo Brouwer | Leo VI the Wise | Leo | Pope Leo X | Leo Durocher | Wadada Leo Smith | Ted Leo | Pope Leo I | marks | Pope Leo IX | Melissa Leo | Leo Carrillo | Howard Marks | Ted Leo and the Pharmacists | Leo Castelli | Leo Burnett Worldwide | San Leo | Leo Strauss | Leo Marks | Leo Laporte | Léo Ferré | Leó Szilárd | Leo Slezak | Leo Frobenius | Leo Cárdenas |
Follett's website states that his inspiration for the story came from Leo Marks, a former Special Operations Executive employee, who wrote a brief account in his book, Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's Story 1941-1945 about two young Danes who found a derelict de Havilland Hornet Moth biplane, repaired it, and flew it to Britain.