5. MARGARET HASLUCK AND THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE (SOE), 1942-44 Roderick BAILEY Margaret Hasluck is best known as an ethnographer. Her Unwritten Law in Albania, published posthumously by Cambridge University Press in 1954, is still the authoritative tract on the phenomenon of the Albanian blood feud in the first half of the twentieth century. 1 But memoirs and histories of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill's secret sabotage organisation created during the Second World War to 'set Europe ablaze', tell of her service in a different field: her two years' work for SOE's Albanian Section. Indeed, for over a year she was the only person in SOE focused full-time on the country. Sent to Istanbul 'under an assumed name with disguised appearance and dyed hair', she liaised with Albanian exiles and émigrés, collected intelligence and recruited Albanians for SOE employment against Axis forces in occupied Albania. 2 At SOE Headquarters in Cairo, as the Section grew in size and importance, she continued to gather intelligence and briefed British officers before they left to assist the Albanian resistance. In 1944 she received an MBE for her efforts. Drawing on the recently released files of SOE and on the memories of some of its officers, this chapter presents the first detailed account of this brief but eventful period of Margaret Hasluck's life. Officers whom she taught have written since, and fondly, of a strong-willed woman who applied herself to the tasks at hand with great industry and devotion. David Smiley, second-in- command of the first SOE mission into Albania, recalled that this 'elderly lady ... with greying hair swept back into a bun and a pink complexion with bright blue eyes' reminded him 'of an old-fashioned English nanny. Full of energy and enthusiasm, she was totally dedicated to her beloved Albania'. 3 Yet officers with whom she worked at SOE headquarters found such total dedication difficult to deal with; Jon Naar, the Albanian Section's Military Intelligence Officer, compared her more to characters played by 'the film 1 M. Hasluck (1954). 2 Quote from a document in Hasluck's SOE Personal File, still classified at the time of writing and made available by the SOE Adviser to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. 3 Smiley (1984; 8-9).