Noor Inayat Khan, the Indian-origin British spy who worked as an undercover radio operator in Nazi-occupied France in 1943, was captured and killed in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944 at the age of 30, is to be honoured through another London landmark on Friday.

The Bloomsbury home of Khan – 4, Taviton Street – will be marked prominently with a ‘blue plaque’ by English Heritage, a charity organisation that manages and cares for over 400 historic monuments, buildings and sites.

Founded in 1866, the ‘blue plaques’ scheme celebrates links between notable figures of the past and the buildings in which they lived and worked. Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross and the French Croix de Guerre, and in 2012 Princess Anne unveiled her bust in Gordon Square Gardens.

Born in Moscow in 1914 to a Sufi teacher and an American mother, Khan was educated in London and Paris. She worked for the Special Operations Executive in Paris in 1943 during the Second World War.

Khan evaded capture by the Nazis and continued to send messages to London for far longer than expected, but was betrayed, arrested and interrogated, but refused to give up secrets. She has been described as “one of the silent heroes of the Second World War”.

The blue plaque will be unveiled on Friday by Khan’s biographer, journalist-writer Shrabani Basu, which will be webcast on Facebook at 7 pm UK time, English Heritage said.

Basu, said: “When Noor Inayat Khan left this house on her last mission, she would never have dreamed that one day she would become a symbol of bravery. She was an unlikely spy. As a Sufi she believed in non-violence and religious harmony. Yet when her adopted country needed her, she unhesitatingly gave her life in the fight against fascism”.

“It is fitting that Noor Inayat Khan is the first woman of Indian origin to be remembered with a Blue Plaque. As people walk by, Noor’s story will continue to inspire future generations. In today’s world, her vision of unity and freedom is more important than ever,” she added.

Several Indians have been honoured through ‘blue plaques’ over the years on London houses and venues with which they were associated, including Rammohun Roy, Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and B R Ambedkar.

Anna Eavis of English Heritage said: “We’re so pleased to be able to continue unveiling our 2020 blue plaques with this virtual ceremony after a very quiet few months. I am particularly delighted to start with Noor Inayat Khan, whose courage was unfaltering even in the face of such extreme danger.”

According to a brief account of Khan’s work, on June 16, 1943, she was flown to France to serve as a wireless operator for the largest Resistance organisation in Paris. Soon after her arrival, the network collapsed and the Gestapo made multiple arrests.

Khan chose to stay in order to keep communications open with her French comrades; she was by this time the only transmitting agent in Paris. By keeping on the move and changing her appearance, she was able to evade the Germans for three-and-a-half months while continuing to transmit messages.

As Paris became increasingly dangerous, she prepared to leave for England in mid-October. She may well have succeeded had she not been betrayed on October 14 and taken with her transmitter to the Gestapo’s Paris headquarters.

She escaped at least twice only to be recaptured and, after refusing to agree not to try again, became the first agent to be sent to Germany ‘for safe custody’. At Pforzheim Prison she was considered highly dangerous and kept in isolation with only short periods out of chains but despite beatings refused to cooperate.

On September 11, 1944 she was sent with three other female agents on the 250-mile journey to the Dachau concentration camp. Evidence given at the War Crimes trial and by surviving prisoners revealed that Khan was singled out for a night of torture and then, like her comrades, was shot in the head.

Some witnesses said that the women were still alive when they were cremated on the morning of September 13, 1944. Khan had revealed nothing to her captors, not even her real name, and her last word was said to have been ‘Liberté!’

She was awarded the Croix de Guerre with Gold Star on January 16, 1946 and the George Cross on April 5, 1949.