Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

For ten years, she managed to hold sway over Europe, dancing in Monte Carlo, Berlin, Vienna, and Spain. She even auditioned for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, although she was incensed that he sent Massine to audition her instead of showing up himself. She danced in Operas, and in music halls. But time was running out, she was pushing forty, and in the wake of her success, came imitators. The one role that she was most suited for, she never got, Salome in Richard Strauss’s opera, although she tried desperately. She was no longer as original as she had once been. She took to holding concerts in her mansion in Neuilly, where she danced accompanied by a Sufi holy man and master musician, Inayat Khan. Otherwise, she was supported by her various lovers, many of whom were officers. Everything changed for Mata Hari when the war started. She was in Berlin where she had been engaged to perform for several months in the autumn. When war broke, Mata Hari tried to get out of her contract. Her dresser ...

Her name is now synonymous for femme fatale, a slinky seductress luring men to their doom but who was Mata Hari exactly? Was she the treacherous spy who sent thousands of men to their death or was she used as a convenient scapegoat by not only the British, but the Germans and the French as well? In recent years, new biographies have come out that suggests just that but despite this, Mata Hari’s image as a seductive spider luring men to their doom continues to live on. Mata Hari began life as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. Born on August 7, 1876 in a small town in northern Holland, she was the eldest child and only daughter, three younger brothers followed in quick succession. Her father Adam Zelle was a prosperous store owner in Leeuwarden, who spoiled his little princess, dressing her in silks and satins that made the other girls at her private school jealous. Margaretha even as a child had a talent for reinvention, she told them that her father was a baron and that she lived in a castl...