French Grand Prix motor racing driver and special agent, also known as “W Williams”, who worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) inside France. He organised and coordinated the Chestnut network. He was captured and executed by the Nazis.
Born to an English father and a French mother, Grover-Williams grew up fluent in both the French and English languages.
By 1926, Grover-Williams had begun racing a Bugatti in races throughout France, using the alias, “W Williams”, entering the Grand Prix de Provence at Miramas and the Monte Carlo Rally. In 1928, he won the French Grand Prix, repeating in 1929. That same year, driving a Bugatti 35B, painted in what would become known as “British racing green”, he won the inaugural Monaco Grand Prix beating the heavily favoured Mercedes of the great German driver, Rudolf Caracciola. In 1931, he won the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. He also won the Grand Prix de la Baule in three consecutive years (1931 to 1933). Then his career waned and he was out of racing by the latter part of the 1930s.
Following the German occupation of France in the Second World War, Grover-Williams fled to England where he joined the Royal Army Service Corps. Due to his fluency in French and English, he was recruited into the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to foster the French Resistance. He recruited fellow racing driver Robert Benoist and together they worked in the Paris region to build up a successful circuit of operatives, forming sabotage cells and reception committees for Allied parachute operations.
On 2 August 1943, Grover-Williams was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst and underwent lengthy interrogation before being deported to Berlin and was then held prisoner in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Grover-Williams was executed at Sachsenhausen in the spring of 1945, along with fellow SOE network leader Francis Suttill.
Link to Wikipedia biography