(1893-1993)
English Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) volunteer, propagandist, and author. Stark served as a VAD worker during World War I and worked extensively with British intelligence during World War II.
Although her parents were English, Stark was raised in Italy. She began training as a nurse at St. Ursula in Bologna when Italy entered World War I but left nursing in 1915. After a broken engagement and illness, Stark traveled to England in 1916. She briefly worked as a censor before training with the VAD. She served as a VAD volunteer at Villa Trento in 1917 until her hospital unit retreated to Padua. She also served at various other English hospitals in Italy until the war’s close.
Stark’s involvement in World War II began as a correspondent with the British Foreign Office in Aden, Yemen, providing information on the Middle Eastern situation. In 1940 she visited Yemen, smuggling, translating, and showing British propaganda films to the elite. In 1940 she relocated to Cairo, Egypt, where she worked closely on propaganda with General Wavell, the commander in chief of the British eastern forces. She established the Brotherhood of Freedom, a largely social group that perpetuated Muslim and Christian ideals while advocating British interests. In 1941 Stark moved to Baghdad, Iraq, despite an intergovernmental crisis and a siege of the British Embassy that lasted from April to June. She traveled widely throughout the Middle East—Persia, Jerusalem, even Cyprus—and to India as well for her propaganda work.
In 1943 and 1944 Stark toured the United States and Canada. She gave speeches and socialized with influential people in an attempt to counteract Zionism. She encountered difficulty, however, due to anti-British sentiment in the United States and the unpopularity of the Colonial Office because of British involvement in India.
Stark eventually returned to her home in Italy, where she continued her propaganda work amid the ruins of the waning war and the collapse of fascism.
