Bletchley Park Magazine – Issue 3 by Cultureshock Media

THE IMITATION GAME AT BLETCHLEY PARK

Issue no. 3 Autumn/Winter 2014

Bletchley Park Magazine

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Demystifying the Bombe by Dermot Turing Just in time for Christmas! A comprehensive, easy explanation of the Turing-Welchman Bombe by the nephew of Alan Turing. Exclusively in Bletchley Park's Gift Shop or online. Just £6.99 (or £10.00 with the Souvenir Guidebook)

www.bletchleypark.org.uk

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THE IMITATION GAME AT BLETCHLEY PARK

Issue no. 3 Autumn/Winter 2014

Bletchley Park Magazine

FOR BLETCHLEY PARK Chief Executive Officer: Iain Standen Director of Development: Claire Glazebrook Director of Operations & Communication: Kelsey Griffin Media Relations Manager: Katherine Lynch

Original Concept Design: Rose www.rosedesign.co.uk

Bletchley Park Trust Ltd The Mansion Bletchley Park Milton Keynes MK3 6EB Tel: +44 (0) 1908 640404 Bletchley Park Shop: +44 (0) 1908 272684 Friends & Veterans Office: +44 (0) 1908 272652 Email: friends@bletchleypark.org.uk www.bletchleypark.org.uk

FOR CULTURESHOCK MEDIA Publisher: Phil Allison Contributing Editor: David Jays Sub Editor: Ian Massey Editorial team: Rachel Potts, Shula Subramaniam, Simon Arthur Art Director: Alfonso Iacurci Designers: Hannah Dossary, Helen McFarland, Fanny Wacklin Nilsson Production Manager: Nicola Vanstone

Photography Photographs © Shaun Armstrong / mubsta.com Historical images: Crown Copyright. By kind permission Director GCHQ Images of The Imitation Game courtesy of Studio Canal.

PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR BY Cultureshock Media 27b Tradescant Road London SW8 1XD +44 (0) 207 7359263 www.cultureshockmedia.co.uk Printed in England © Bletchley Park Trust 2014

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THE IMITATION GAME AT BLETCHLEY PARK

Issue no. 3 Autumn/Winter 2014

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FOR BLETCHLEY PARK Chief Executive Officer: Iain Standen Director of Development: Claire Glazebrook Director of Operations & Communication: Kelsey Griffin Media Relations Manager: Katherine Lynch

Original Concept Design: Rose www.rosedesign.co.uk

Photography Photographs © Shaun Armstrong / mubsta.com Historical images: Crown Copyright. By kind permission Director GCHQ Images of The Imitation Game courtesy of Studio Canal.

PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR BY Cultureshock Media 27b Tradescant Road London SW8 1XD +44 (0) 207 7359263 www.cultureshockmedia.co.uk Printed in England © Bletchley Park Trust 2014

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CONTENTS 3 LETTER FROM THE CEO Iain Standen surveys a remarkable year for Bletchley Park as the major first phase of restoration is completed

40 INSIDE STORY Tour the impressive displays and richly atmospheric buildings at the restored Bletchley Park

4 NEWS All the latest announcements, events and exhibitions

46 VISITOR INFORMATION Tickets, opening times and members’ events

7 MYTHBUSTERS Michael Smith asks: Did gender equality really exist among the Codebreakers?

48 MY BLETCHLEY Television director Sarah Harding found work and family history meet on ITV’s The Bletchley Circle

8 ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE The documents that expose the great D-Day double cross 14 A PHOTOGRAPHIC MYSTERY On the enigmatic GCHQ photographs that show Bletchley Park in action

F E AT U R E S 18 THE MAN WHO BECAME ALAN TURING We speak to British star Benedict Cumberbatch about bringing the father of modern computing to life on the big screen 24 FRONT PAGE NEWS A visit from Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge made headlines in June, but Bletchley Park and its Veterans are big stories in their own right

32 LABOUR OF LOVE Behind the scenes with the writer, director and location manager of this year’s Codebreaking thriller, The Imitation Game, set at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park Trust Ltd The Mansion, Bletchley Park Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB Tel: +44 (0) 1908 640404 2

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Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

LETTER FROM THE CEO IAIN STANDEN Welcome to the third Bletchley Park Magazine. This really has been a landmark year, following more than 22 years of work by the Bletchley Park Trust. It has seen the completion of Project NEPTUNE, an £8 million Heritage Lottery-funded initiative that has delivered the first phase of essential restoration work to the historic Bletchley Park site. We are now riding high on the wave of success culminating in the formal re-launch of Bletchley Park by Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge on 18 June. We were delighted to host this visit, particularly given her strong family connections – both her grandmother and great-aunt worked here during the war. It was very appropriate that we were able to show her the results of the restoration project. As many readers will be aware, the project had three main elements. First, the restoration of the iconic wartime Codebreaking Huts. Designed to be temporary structures for the duration of World War Two, these were nearly lost to the nation. They have now been saved and faithfully and sympathetically restored for future generations.

and genius, helped to shorten the war by up to two years. Unsightly car parks have been removed with the centre of the site reverting to parkland. Our many visitors will now be able to enjoy the view of the gardens that Commander Denniston, the first Head of the Government Code and Cypher School, ordered to be retained to provide essential rest and recuperation space for the Codebreakers. Finally, Block C, where Hollerith punchcard machines carried out rapid analysis of encrypted message systems to assist the Codebreakers, has been transformed into a vibrant Visitor Centre with an orientation exhibition (Secrets Revealed: Introducing Bletchley Park). Along with a brand new shop, café and Cyber Security exhibition and Learning Zone, the visitors’ experience of Bletchley Park has been dramatically improved. Looking ahead, Bletchley Park remains high profile. As you will see in this magazine, the new feature film about Alan Turing, The Imitation Game, sheds further light on Bletchley Park and the work conducted by the Codebreakers, and will undoubtedly lead to more visitors coming to find out about the extraordinary story.

Secondly, the transformation of Bletchley Park has involved returning the site to how it looked in wartime. This allows visitors to experience it as it was for those who worked here during World War Two, and to serve as a permanent, fitting tribute to the men and women who, through their hard work, determination Bletchley Park Magazine

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Image courtesy of Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

C E N T E N A RY O F A N U N S U N G H E RO

SUZUKI DRIVES E DU C AT I O N F O R WA R D

1940S BOUTIQUE DAYS

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Whelan MBE, one of Bletchley Park’s many unsung heroes. As Deputy Head of the Hollerith Section, originally housed in Hut 7 before moving to Block C, Whelan’s contribution to the war effort at Bletchley Park was of great value. By tabulating information from intercepted messages, the Hollerith Section served as a reference source for Codebreaking operations and, as author Dr Joel Greenberg notes, ‘carried out vitally important data processing and cryptographic work throughout the war’. Block C is now home to the vibrant new Visitor Centre.

Milton Keynes Suzuki is supporting Bletchley Park’s expanding Education Programme and providing a brand new SX4 S-Cross from its showroom in Old Stratford. The Education Programme is growing rapidly thanks to increased interest in World War Two Codebreaking and its legacy. It offers packed visits for primary and secondary schools, with tours of the atmospheric Codebreaking Huts and exciting mathematics workshops in Codes and Ciphers. A dedicated Outreach Officer travels the country taking the story of Bletchley Park to schools, colleges and community groups. Bletchley Park’s Liz McCaffry Payne, says “Having only been in MK for a year, Milton Keynes Suzuki are still establishing their role in the community and this partnership shows how keen they are to get to the heart of something people here rightly feel proud of.” To find out more about the Education Programme visit www.bletchleypark.org.uk/edu

On selected dates throughout 2015, hairdresser and makeup artist Sarah Dunn returns to Bletchley Park to teach you the secrets of iconic wartime looks including victory rolls – and the makeup to match. Sarah will help you create seasonal 1940s glamour for everything from Valentine’s Day to Christmas.

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7 February 2015 In time for Valentine’s Day, create a glamorous evening look 18 April 2015 A fresh, versatile springtime do to wear out and about 18 July 2015 Sarah’s step-by-step guide to creating a wearable vintage look for the festival season 17 October 2015 Get ready for winter with styles that look glamorous with hats and scarves 5 December 2015 Stand out at the Christmas party with this festive look. For more information please visit www.bletchleypark.org.uk

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Author of Demystifying the Bombe and Bletchley Park Trustee Dermot Turing

an engineer and I’m not a mathematician, but that’s actually part of what I was trying to achieve here. To interpret the Bombe for a non-specialist, I thought it would be helpful to have a non-specialist write it.’

Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

In his exploration of the history of the Bombe, he discusses not only the importance of Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman in its creation, but also the vital contribution made by the often overlooked engineer Doc Keen, ‘the man who brought the thing to life’. ‘Not only did he understand what these crazy mathematicians from Cambridge University were actually describing to him, but he managed to design and build a prototype in just an astonishingly short time frame.’

W H AT MADE THE BOMBE TICK?

Dermot Turing’s new book, Demystifying the Bombe, offers a fascinating insight into the history and workings of the TuringWelchman Bombe, the device used to decipher German Enigma messages. Observing visitors to Bletchley Park, Alan Turing’s nephew and Bletchley Park Trustee Dermot Turing detected a desire from many to discover more about the Bombe – what it actually did, and how it did it. ‘Some people want to get into the subject a bit more, want to roll their sleeves up and find out about the engineering story behind the device,’ he says. ‘It seemed to me that a book was probably the right way of trying to help them do that.’

Describing the difficulties he faced researching the book, Turing says: ‘It took several months to get my head around the problem, which certainly makes you incredibly awestruck.’ Grasping the concepts retrospectively was a humbling task: ‘I’m just trying to understand what it is they actually did, I’m not trying to invent or imagine the thing for the first time. It really puts you in your place in terms of what the amazing contribution that the original Bombe builders came up with was.’ Demystifying the Bombe by Dermot Turing, The History Press, £6.99 Available to buy at www.bletchleypark.org.uk

His study aims to emphasise ‘the clever ideas’ behind what was revolutionary technology in its time and ‘give a sense of the cleverness of the engineering design’. Turing wanted to make a highly complex subject as accessible as possible: ‘I’m not Bletchley Park Magazine

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Image courtesy of Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

I N S P I R I N G YO U N G M I N DS – F O R F R E E

R E A L S TO RY O F T H E I M I TAT I O N G A M E

Bletchley Park has announced a new pilot bursary scheme funded by Winton Capital Management to provide free school trips to the site for those most in need of financial support. The scheme is yet another improvement to our exciting Education Programme, which welcomes 9,500 schoolchildren each year. Victoria Worpole, Director of Learning and Collections at Bletchley Park states: ‘These bursaries will help enormously by making exciting and engaging school trips to Bletchley Park available to children for whom it might have been out of reach. It is vital that we inspire young minds.’

To coincide with the release of Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, Bletchley Park is staging a unique exhibition offering a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film. Depicting the life of Codebreaker Alan Turing, with scenes shot in Bletchley Park itself, it features an all-star line up, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing and Keira Knightley as cryptanalyst Joan Clarke. Visitors to the exhibition enter on a red carpet and are presented with an array of costumes and props from the film, highlights of which, according to organiser Sarah Kay, include the engagement ring given to Joan by Alan and notes written by actors ‘in action’. ‘But the real wow factor,’ says Kay, ‘has to be the Bombe, otherwise known as Christopher, which is such an amazing prop and so enormous it really shows the efforts the art department and the prop makers went to in their attention to detail.’

10 November 2014 to 1 November 2015

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BLETCHLEY MYTHBUSTERS Michael Smith asks... Did gender equality really exist at Bletchley Park?

Keira Knightley’s performance as Joan Clarke in The Imitation Game has highlighted another of the myths of Bletchley Park – that women were treated exactly the same as men. They certainly enjoyed more equality than women were used to in that era, but it was limited. Joan was fortunate to go into Hut 8, the same section as Alan Turing. She was recruited in 1940, not by Turing, but by Gordon Welchman, the head of Hut 6, the army and air force Enigma section. Welchman had been her tutor at Cambridge. He knew how good she was, but until 1942 the main Codebreaking in Hut 6 was carried out entirely by men. Even in 1942, when there weren’t enough men to keep pace with the increasing workload of Hut 6, the Bletchley Park bosses simply hived off the easier tasks for an all-woman section. The section which carried out the really difficult bits of the Codebreaking remained entirely male.

Top: Michael Smith Below: Keira Knightley as the Codebreaker Joan Clarke in The Imitation Game

But Hut 8 was different. In mid-1940, when Joan arrived, it was expanding to work on the U-Boat Enigma cypher Dolphin. The U-Boats were sinking Allied supply ships coming across the Atlantic from America. Turing and his colleagues had to break Dolphin as quickly as possible, and to do that they needed as many good mathematicians as they could get. Hut 8 was also smaller than Hut 6, so did not have the same problems. Under Civil Service regulations, women were not allowed to work on their own with men at night – just in case they got up to something! But in Hut 8 there was only one Codebreaker on at night, so the rules didn’t apply. The other inequality was in pay. By September 1941, there were around 400 men and 1,000 women at Bletchley, including about 200 women with honours degrees who were graded as Linguists, earning anything between £104 and £195 a year. Men doing comparable jobs were on the next grade up, Junior Assistant, earning between £300 and £400 a year. The bright young women recruited from Cambridge would, however, have been accustomed to inequality. Joan Clarke earned a first class degree, but, like all of the other females who studied at Cambridge, she was not actually presented with one. The university allowed women to study alongside men, but did not award them degrees until 1961. Michael Smith is the author of The Secrets of Station X and co-editor with Ralph Erskine of The Bletchley Park Codebreakers. He is a Trustee of Bletchley Park and Chair of the Trust’s Historical Advisory Committee.

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ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE THE GREAT D-DAY DOUBLE CROSS 8

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ÂŠ Crown Copyright: By kind permission Director GCHQ

Arguably the greatest double cross of World War Two, Operation Fortitude duped the German forces into believing Allied troops would land at Pas de Calais on 6 June 1944, rather than Normandy. Curator Gillian Mason and Senior Archivist Richard Lewis discuss how vital Bletchley Park was in the plot, which secured the success of D-Day, and the astounding documents about the landings that are now on show at Bletchley Park

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ÂŠ Crown Copyright: By kind permission Director GCHQ

The Hut 3 Headlines are German Army and Air Force communications pertaining to D-Day, deciphered at Bletchley Park. The messages were decrypted in Hut 6, but translated in Hut 3, where their meaning emerged.

In 1942 a Spanish agent known as Garbo arrived on Britain’s shores. He would work with MI5 to feed misinformation to German forces, having gained the trust of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. It was this trust, along with Bletchley Park’s ability to decipher German communications, that enabled D-Day. On the event’s 70th anniversary this year, the Bletchley Park Trust is showing a crucial intercepted memo leading up to the invasion and, from the day itself, German messages (‘Headlines’) deciphered at Bletchley Park that reveal how the double cross unfolded. How and when were these documents found in the Bletchley Park records? richard lew is — The intercepted messages and Headlines were included in the material that GCHQ has loaned to the Bletchley Park Trust. gillian maso n — Bletchley Park always knew they were within these documents. How do they illuminate what happened during Operation Fortitude? rl — The Hut 3 Headlines pertaining to D-Day are very interesting. They show the German perspective on the invasion as it unfolded, and are an insight into the intelligence that Bletchley Park felt would be of use to the Allied forces. gm — The beauty of the Hut 3 Headlines is that when you read them, the invasion unfolds almost in real time.

Can you tell us a little about Juan Pujol, also know as Garbo, and how he gained the trust of the Abwehr? rl — Garbo was a Spanish double agent. His original application to work for the British was rejected, so he moved to Lisbon to facilitate the ruse that he was in the United Kingdom spying. From here, using a tourist’s guide to Britain, reference books, magazines and newsreel reports in cinemas, he created false intelligence reports and sent these to the Germans. His false reports proved so successful that once MI5 were aware Garbo was the source, he was asked to join them and work for the British government.

How vital was Bletchley Park’s role in Operation Fortitude? rl — It was crucial. The Codebreakers were able to gauge the German reaction to the false information being fed to them during Operation Fortitude. Nowhere else was able to provide this. What do the Hut 3 Headlines tell us about what happened on D-Day? rl — They provide a snapshot of the key intelligence that Bletchley Park felt it necessary to provide to the Allied forces. They clearly show the change in the German reaction throughout the course of the day, as greater numbers of Allied troops were committed.

What did Bletchley Park contribute to the plan? rl — Bletchley Park’s main role was to monitor the messages being sent to Germany and ensure they were being received and that the intelligence was being believed. The monitoring of German responses allowed future false intelligence to be tailored accordingly.

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Do we know how staff at Bletchley Park at the time responded to receiving the intercepted messages: are there any anecdotes? gm — Due to the secret nature of the work, the Bletchley Park Trust has only been able to piece together information from Veterans over the past few years. The following quote came to us from Veteran Agnes Jean Tocher while being interviewed as part of the Oral History Project:

How does it feel to work with documents of such historical importance? rl — It’s a wonderful feeling and reminds me how lucky I am to have the job I do. How do they help you to tell the story of Bletchley Park and keep the importance of the site alive? rl — The Headlines neatly encapsulate the hard work of all involved at Bletchley Park and the associated outstations. The fact that they are the end result and so accessible through their succinctness means they not only provide an insight into the work of Bletchley Park, but capture people’s imagination and act as a stimulus to find out more.

Preparations for the Normandy landings, France, June 1944

Expert Infantry © www.expertinfantry.com

‘One of the most important events was the build up to D-Day. We were trying to persuade the Germans that we were going to invade at Calais, but we were going to invade in Normandy. We plotted the German E-boats, particularly dangerous to us in the Channel, to French fishing boats — the lot. It got so busy at that time that we stayed on for a second watch, because it was terribly important to keep the plot up to date.’ – Agnes Jean Tocher. WRNS. Naval Section ‘British Plot’

What did you feel when you first saw these documents? rl — Excited. The Headlines pertaining to D-Day are part of a wider series. They are all very accessible and contain huge amounts of fascinating information and detail about key events throughout the war. gm — Excited and extremely proud. These documents are among my favourites in the collection as they provide a snapshot into the events on and surrounding D-Day.

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A PHOTOGRAPHIC MYSTERY

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It is not known for certain how many there are, who is in them and even why they exist. Rachel Potts take a close look at two of the mysterious photographs shot at Bletchley Park while it was operating as a covert Codebreaking centre to find out more

On the face of it, these two black-andwhite prints appear unremarkable. They are, in fact, far from it. Unseen for decades, they and others like them arrived in the public realm by various routes, some, strangely, from America. So what is known about them, and what can they tell us about life and work at World War Two’s most secret location?

Tony Comer, the articulate and highly knowledgeable GCHQ historian and custodian of the organisation’s archive, knows that they can give us an idea at least of wartime Bletchley Park. Particularly in these two prints, which show different departments of Hut 6, we can see that most people there were ‘basically office workers’. What you cannot discern is the significance of their work. There are small clues in many of the pictures. From writing on blackboards and other pointers, it is presumed they were all taken just as the European war was winding down and focus was shifting towards Japan. And the early computers being built there are visible. The photographs add texture to what is already known, but, Comer admits, leave him wishing for more. He stresses that whoever pressed the shutter could never have believed they were working for posterity, or that the images would reach public eyes. The best guess is that they were taken for an official report. Such documents, many illustrated, were produced across Government departments during the war.

There are a few photographs currently in circulation, and the same handful are often used to illustrate life at Bletchley Park and its achievements. However, an estimated 140 exist. GCHQ possesses hard copies and the glass plate negatives of some, though many of the latter are in poor condition after 70 years in storage (a selection of impressive positives have been blown up for display at Bletchley Park’s new Visitor Centre).

‘Whoever pressed the shutter could never have believed they were working for posterity’ Many, perhaps most disappointingly, are unpopulated, showing only machines and empty rooms. Of the people who do appear, no names were kept to identify them. Tony reminds us that Bletchley Park grew from a workforce of 180 in August 1939 to 9,000 (with a further 1,500 in the local area) by early 1945. Working methods included the somewhat chaotic and ad hoc, and documenting this level of detail was relatively low on the list of priorities. Many people have contacted Bletchley Park claiming to recognise certain individuals. However, partly because of poor image quality, the same

photographed figure is often identified multiple times, such as the lone man among a sea of women at desks in the picture of the Hut 6 registration room. Comer believes some of his negatives could yield high-quality and possibly recognisable images, and he is currently working through data protection issues to enable them one day to be released. So how did the images reach the public? Some were released by GCHQ in the 1990s to the National Archives among millions of World War Two records, all of which took ten years to publish, once their contents were no longer sensitive, to aid recognition of Bletchley Park Veterans after years of silence. Then there are those from America. Roughly 230 US military personnel were working at Bletchley Park by 1945, and Comer surmises some of them must have been given photographs as a record, but to be kept classified. They found their way to an American veterans association and around the turn of the millennium were sent out into the public realm. Bletchley Park received them on a disk from a volunteer. Comer is clearly fascinated by his privileged proximity to these documents. ‘It’s almost like being able to touch the past,’ he confesses. The awe wears off over time, but every now and then, ‘a look on somebody’s face, one of those cavernous empty rooms, or a massive, bulky machine, even after years it can still catch you. You just think, what was it actually like to be in there then?’

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The workers in this room sorted raw intercepted German messages into groups based on intelligent decisions about what they might contain, and sent them on to the correct departments for deciphering and processing. These are large ‘pigeonholes’ along the left wall, and you can see they are gradually being filled up.

The man The Oral History Officer at Bletchley Park, Jonathan Byrne, says: ‘I’ve had lots of people call in to say, “I think that’s my father, do you know who it is?” But we really don’t.’ The figure is noticeably the only male in the room, highlighting that the Bletchley Park workforce was predominantly female. He is probably doing the same job as the women alongside him. Perhaps he stood for the picture to animate the scene. A sense of scale Look closely and the right-hand side of the picture reveals another tranche of desks and women busy at work.

THE HUT 6

REGISTRATION ROOM

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The key for the day has been worked out, and the women in this picture are using Typex machines – a British machine that could be made to work like Enigma – to decode German messages. The code is typed in and German plain text is being printed out. It will then be passed on to linguists to translate.

The writing on the cupboard None of the writing on any sheet of paper is visible, but the cupboard at the back bears a nearly legible message, possibly ‘Happy New Year’, spelled out using the narrow gummed tape on which the output of the Typex machine was printed. Looking out On closer inspection, there are a few faces looking directly at the camera – one at the back, and just behind the third pillar on the right, perhaps leaning forward to make sure she’s in the photo. Comer sees something new each time he looks at these images, and it is just such details that bring to life the fact that ‘these were real people at work’.

THE HUT 6

DECODING ROOM Bletchley Park Magazine

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INTERVIEW WITH BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

THE MAN WHO BECAME ALAN TURING We sit down with Benedict Cumberbatch to talk about filming onsite at Bletchley Park and bringing the brilliant, tragic Alan Turing to the big screen Bletchley Park Magazine

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He is one of the most successful British exports of recent years, a Hollywood star known globally as the 21st-century Sherlock. Benedict Cumberbatch has now been Oscar tipped for his portrayal of the cryptographer Alan Turing in this year’s thriller, The Imitation Game. The actor has made no secret of his passion about telling Turing’s story, and it shows. For a film with complex maths and a shy and distant scientist at its centre, it is gripping and very moving. Early screenings garnered five-star reviews, and The Imitation Game was selected for the gala opening of the 2014 London Film Festival. There, Cumberbatch spoke to the press about helping to gain Turing the recognition he deserves ‘as a scientist, a father of the modern computer age, a war hero and a man who lived an uncompromising life’.

The film follows an awkward, singleminded Turing through a difficult childhood, his tricky but ultimately transformative time working with a team at Bletchley Park, his friendship with the female Codebreaker Joan Clarke – played by Keira Knightley – and his inspired creation of the Bombe, a machine that helped the Allies break the presumably impenetrable Nazi Enigma codes. It also recounts his arrest and prosecution in 1952 for homosexuality, and his subsequent suicide.

With no aural or visual recording of Turing, Cumberbatch could only research his character through written accounts and by speaking to relatives and acquaintances, and admitted feeling ‘a weight of importance’ in bringing Turing’s extraordinary life and achievements to a broad audience. Katherine Lynch talks to the actor to find out more about nerves, his own imitation game playing one of the 20th century’s great geniuses and magical moments filming at the very place in which Turing’s legacy was created.

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Left to right: Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander in a scene filmed inside Bletchley Park’s ballroom; Cumberbatch alongside the Bombe machine, designed by Alan Turing

wood. But at Bletchley Park, everywhere you looked you knew this was the actual architecture – some of the trees had been there even before any of the Codebreakers. You really feel like you’re playing slightly with ghosts. It’s nerveracking. You think, ‘Christ, we’re fictionalising what really happened,’ but at the same time we got so much of a blessing from the Trust, and we can’t thank them enough. We’re just thrilled to have featured Bletchley Park as we did.

What was it like visiting Bletchley Park? It was an extraordinary experience. I went there a couple of times for research and the Bletchley Park team were amazing. They opened doors and were so patient with my struggling actor’s brain, trying to encompass what cryptography really is and what actually happened there, as well as learning how the Bombe worked, which we give a different name to in the film. To work in the environs where the people breathed, lived, loved, worked, struggled, kept secrets, were quietly, stoically heroic, was overwhelming.

How important was it that Bletchley Park itself was featured? Very important. I think it wouldn’t have felt right not to have a moment with Bletchley Park featuring properly. But there have been many changes to it since the war, so to shoot the whole film there would have been anachronistic in terms of the storyline, and what it was like then. How did being at Bletchley Park affect your job of portraying Turing? The parts where we were at Bletchley Park were magical moments in the filming schedule. It really was very special. You do feel that however brilliant a constructed set is – and Maria Djurkovic is seriously brilliant as a production designer; I’ve worked with her before on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and she can do something with nothing every single time she creates these extraordinary worlds – it can wear a bit thin. You realise when you go out for your cup of coffee that it’s just something flat, with a weight propping up a bit of

Did you feel a responsibility in playing a real character, especially one within living memory? Well, in living memory, but not in recorded memory. There aren’t any records, not in any visual filmic or audio form. His very distinct mannerisms, his voice, his speech patterns and pitch, these were things that were documented. Obviously, then there is the matter of this being a film, and if I did it to the extreme – Alan apparently did have his stammer, and his high pitch as well – it would have been very hard to tell the story and keep the momentum of the film going. And it’s his legacy that’s really important. So what I beg people to realise is I would only ever say this is a touchstone, just a beginning, an impression, an idea of the man, an imitation even, to coin a pun. Though he wasn’t physically there for me to talk to and ask questions of and observe his behaviour, even through recordings, after a while of playing him, he really did get under my skin. I had a huge love of the man, so it matters to me deeply that we’ve portrayed something of an accurate nature about his personality as well as the story. Bletchley Park Magazine

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‘To work where these people breathed, lived, loved, worked, struggled, kept secrets, were quietly, stoically heroic, was overwhelming’

Above: Stephen Kettle’s statue of Alan Turing on view at Bletchley Park Opposite: A moment of discovery for the Codebreakers: Cumberbatch as Turing alongside Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke, Matthew Beard as Peter Hilton and Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander

What has been the reaction from the Turing family? Thankfully, the Turing family had a screening and gave it the thumbs up. They were thrilled, and the same reaction from the Bletchley Park Trust too is hugely important. There are people who have a much more intimate knowledge of him and have written incredible biographies, such as Andrew Hodges, and their work should be something that people take on board after watching this film: the brilliant books written about Hut 8 and all the work that happened at Bletchley Park. I really would suggest people look at that. It was a fascinating open door of discovery to delve into that world, which is now more in the public domain than it has been in the past.

How important is it that Bletchley Park’s legacy is kept alive and accessible? Hugely important. That was where men and women from all walks of society, with all sorts of abilities, whether it be actors and artists or the more likely candidates of mathematicians and physicists and scientific thinkers, came together to try to crack the encryption devices of the Nazis. And the Germans were winning the war, the country was starving, the clock was ticking, as is portrayed in the pacey thriller element of our film. To understand the importance of that is also to understand the importance of those men and women. To experience something of that in the actual environs of where it happened, through the extraordinary exhibits at Bletchley Park and the explanations you get both of the environment there and the tools – it’s amazing. To think from that came a reading of a code that basically won us World War Two, shortening it, some estimate, by two years and saving millions of lives. It was all done in secret, and now we can look at that secret. So how can that not be one of the most important legacies we have in our culture of that era? It’s incredibly important that it’s open to the public, and is something that’s well funded and supported and continues, because this is our history.

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Opposite: HRH The Duchess of Cambridge adds another level of excitement to the grand reopening of Bletchley Park on 18 June 2014

FRONT PAGE NEWS Images opposite courtesy of Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

This summer, a royal visit to Bletchley Park by one of the most famous women on the planet could not have been more at odds with its dark wartime days. Rachel Potts revisits the event, talks to the 90-year-old Veteran who knew the grandmother of Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge at Bletchley Park, and discovers this is not the only thing about the Codebreaker HQ that has been making international headlines

On the afternoon of 15 August 1945, Marion Graham was working in Hut 6 at Bletchley Park, directing listening stations as they intercepted enciphered Axis messages. Two friends from secretarial college were with her, twins Valerie and Mary Glassborow, who by chance had turned up later in the same department of the same secret signals centre. The trio’s monotonous work was suddenly interrupted when a superior, Cyril ‘Bungy’ Williams, stepped into the room smiling.

Marion, now aged 90, recalls the moment. ‘He said, “Well done girls, a signal has been intercepted from Tokyo to Geneva and the Japanese are surrendering”.’ The war was over. ‘We just sat there in complete silence. Williams shuffled about and then said, “Well, you bloody well get on with your work now”.’ On 18 June 2014, Marion, now Lady Body found herself back in Hut 6, telling this story to the Duchess of Cambridge in front of an eager crowd of international journalists. The twins Valerie and Mary had gone on to marry two brothers, Peter and Anthony Middleton. Valerie’s granddaughter Kate subsequently married His Royal Highness Prince William.

Among numerous national papers, The Daily Express features The Duchess’s visit to Bletchley Park on its front page

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Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

Marion’s meeting with her old friend’s world-famous granddaughter this summer helped to mark the reopening of Bletchley Park after its £8 million restoration, returning much of it to its 1940s incarnation while revamping displays and visitor facilities. In addition to meeting Lady Body, the Duchess toured the site and tried her hand at signals interception. Her appearance would have been a coup even without the personal connection. As Katherine Lynch, Bletchley Park’s Media Manager, says: ‘The Duchess’s level of fame is something else. It’s royalty multiplied by celebrity. Everything she does is of interest to the public and so, in turn, to the media.’ It wasn’t known that a relative of hers had worked here until Lady Body got in touch with Bletchley Park’s Oral History Officer, Jonathan Byrne, with an unrelated question. As this was soon after the royal wedding, she mentioned working with the Duchess of 26

Cambridge’s grandmother in Hut 6. He noted it down, then, he tells me: ‘A couple of days later I thought, “I should probably tell someone about this”.’ The link between Kate and the Glassborow Veterans was ‘alchemy’, Lynch says. ‘Finding a living Veteran who remembered them both, and remembered them fondly, we knew that would explode.’ Lady Body agreed to share her memories of Valerie and Mary with the press at the reopening. To help to diffuse expected pressure, Lynch pre-recorded an interview during which Lady Body related how the three women had learned that the war was over at roughly the same time as the King and Prime Minister. This was, Lynch admits, ‘media catnip’. The day itself was heralded with the perfect combination of bright sunshine and hoards of press. Counter to every

professional instinct, Lynch had to work with the police to turn paparazzi away. Despite previous experience with gaggles of media outside courtrooms and similar, she stresses: ‘It was like nothing I’ve ever seen.’ There was careful planning: the world’s eyes would be on Bletchley Park, and Lady Body, for a long day. But Lynch could see that this Veteran was ‘very level headed, savvy and well prepared. What she enjoyed was the chance to meet and chat quietly with the Duchess’. Lady Body had lived close to Kate Middleton’s family, and the two had shared neighbourly hellos. It was only just before Kate’s marriage that she caught the unusual surname in a newspaper and realised her relation to Valerie, who sadly passed away in 2006. Marion didn’t have the chance to talk to the former Miss Middleton again until this June.

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Opposite: The Duchess of Cambridge tours the Bletchley Park Mansion in addition to the renovated Huts and Block C

Over the phone from her home, she is affable and quick, despite a bad cold, and certainly unfazed by the attention. ‘I wasn’t intimidated or anything. I rather enjoyed doing it!’ she says, with genuine feeling. ‘It was so marvellous, the sun was shining, everyone was looking so happy and pleased. It was a great occasion.’ She is, indeed, enthusiastic about being able to meet the grandchild of a friend and share that extraordinary moment from 1945. ‘I think the Duchess enjoyed our talk together.’ I wondered how it felt to know that her story had helped to propel the event into the stratosphere (the press garnered was unprecedented for Bletchley Park), but as Lynch had let on about most Veterans’ humble approach to their wartime contribution, Lady Body was keen to shift the focus to others that day. ‘I was absolutely delighted to help,’ she tells me, ‘but everyone at Bletchley Park worked really hard and deserved congratulations on the great success of 18 June. I do appreciate being asked to contribute, and perhaps spread interest.’ A slightly self-conscious chuckle meets a question about what her family made of seeing her in the papers: ‘Well, they went along with it.’

Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

Below: Lady Body and the Duchess of Cambridge in conversation inside Bletchley Park’s restored Hut 6

What struck her most was the contrast between this day in the sun and her first memories of Bletchley Park. ‘I don’t quite know what word to use, it was grim sometimes,’ she explains, ‘the tension in the atmosphere, even in the simple job that I did, it was quite oppressive.’ She felt always under a ‘November fog’. ‘To be talking about it like this did seem very, very strange to me,’ she continues. ‘I never thought that I would be back, not only being able to speak freely, but to appear on television. We didn’t have television then.’ Countries that picked up on the grand reopening of Bletchley Park included Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Croatia, Romania, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, India, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Colombia, Taiwan and South Africa. On 18 and 19 June alone, nearly

300 global articles were published about the event – most leading with the Duchess and her ‘spy grandmother’ – on websites and in newspapers from the Washington Post to El Mundo, as well as in the British press, bringing the story to a potential hundreds of millions of readers and viewers. On the morning of the reopening, Clarence House tweeted a 1940s picture of Valerie Glassborow to its 400,000-plus followers. Lynch remembers coming to work the following day to ‘a pile of newspapers with front-page coverage on my desk. It was wonderful’. Many are now on her office wall.

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Below: Bletchley Park Veterans Jerry Roberts and Betty Webb have both made the news

Images opposite courtesy of Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

‘I never thought that I would be back, not only being able to speak freely, but to appear on television. We didn’t have television then’ — Marion Body

These are hugely impressive statistics, and visitor numbers at Bletchley Park jumped by 60 per cent in July compared with the same month last year. But however much she may have helped, this is not all down to the Duchess.

other Codebreakers and later campaigned for their greater recognition. And the 70th anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 2014 brought yet more news coverage, such as ‘Chaos of Germans intercepted by Bletchley’ in The Times.

A number of high-profile Veteran obituaries have been published recently in British newspapers, including those for Mavis Batey MBE, the Codebreaker who helped to crack Italian navy cyphers, played a crucial role in the double cross mission ensuring the success of D-Day and became a garden historian, and Jerry Roberts, who deciphered top-level messages relating to the death camps and the double cross operation alongside

Lynch’s team has also been busy helping America’s PBS, which aired a TV documentary about MI6 in August, Secrets of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, featuring a rare interview with former intelligence chief Sir John Scarlett KCMG OBE, and Japan’s NHK, for its programme Battle Over Intelligence – The Path to the Japan-US War.

An early media day for the restored Bletchley Park in May generated stories, many leading with interviews with Veterans, including Betty Webb, who deciphered and translated Japanese messages at Bletchley Park and met Michael Portillo on his visit to the site for the BBC’s Great British Railway Journeys. ‘It’s this feeling that we’re running out of time,’ says Lynch, about the steady increase in media interest in Veterans. She also reveals that ‘we’ve turned up in corners of the media that we never knew existed’. This summer she found herself rifling through all the photographs of the Duchess at Bletchley Park to find those that also showed the Block C windows – for a trade magazine. Some archeological finds uncovered during renovation, including clues to the centuries-old predecessor of the Mansion, have meant attention from yet another audience.

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Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

This page: The Duchess of Cambridge accompanied by former MI6 chief Sir John Scarlett KCMG OBE on her tour of the site

‘It is Bletchley Park’s renovation, and enhanced ability to communicate human stories, that really underpins its ballooning visitor numbers’

Lynch feels that the ITV detective series The Bletchley Circle, focusing on life after Bletchley Park, had a major impact. ‘It achieved what you couldn’t in a documentary. It’s the emotional heart of something. The women who worked here were expected just to put the experience away afterwards and go and be ordinary. That’s difficult to evoke in a museum, but that programme did it very powerfully.’ However, it is Bletchley Park’s renovation, and thus an enhanced ability to communicate human stories, that really underpins its ballooning visitor numbers, asserts Lynch. ‘Public relations at a place like this is about what you want people to come here for. A year ago it was more about the story; now it sells itself because

it’s about the experience – you get the story when you come.’ A carefully crafted wartime atmosphere – helping visitors to understand Marion Body’s November fog – and pioneering use of audio and visual technology mean every level of interest is catered for, from an emotive impression to a detailed reading of what was achieved here. ‘Either way, you’ll leave fascinated,’ thinks Lynch.

Opposite top: A visitor enjoys a new multimedia display Opposite bottom: The renovated Block C is now open to visitors

Images opposite courtesy of Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

Learning and Collections Assistant Eloize Shepherd, who met the Duchess on 18 June (‘she was very, very friendly, very interested’), has worked at Bletchley Park for two years and set up Google alerts about the site when she started. She reveals she’s watched the worldwide buzz online grow and grow since, and the place itself ‘just gets busier’. Along with Lynch, she is looking forward to this winter’s new exhibition about The Imitation Game, featuring Benedict Cumberbatch’s star turn as Alan Turing – another huge boost to Bletchley Park’s profile.

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LABOUR OF LOVE

Director Morten Tyldum and Benedict Cumberbatch on set of The Imitation Game 32

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For its American novelist writer, Norwegian director and English location manager, the making of The Imitation Game was a tribute to its main protagonist, Alan Turing, and involved their own sleuthing to discover who he really was. David Jays speaks to Graham Moore, Morten Tyldum and David Broder about re-creating the life of the great Codebreaker truthfully, and thrillingly, on celluloid Bletchley Park Magazine

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‘There’s enough material in the life of Alan Turing to fill a dozen films at least,’ considers Graham Moore. The American novelist has whittled it down to just one screenplay, and The Imitation Game, which recently opened the London Film Festival, is already being lauded. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the ground-breaking mathematician, now posthumously hailed as a war hero, and the film-makers expect Turing’s story will become familiar to audiences around the world – as will the unsung boffins of Bletchley Park, struggling to break the Nazi codes and bring World War Two to an end. Bletchley Park itself appears in the film, as do its iconic machines. ‘The script and film were such a labour of love for all involved,’ Moore tells me, speaking from his home in Chicago. Alongside his own extensive research (beginning with Andrew Hodges’s life of Turing, ‘the gold standard of biographies’), he, Cumberbatch and director Morten Tyldum excitedly unearthed further discoveries, while acquaintances of Turing gave the actor a sense of his speech and movement. Tyldum admits he knew little about Turing before joining the project, and hopes the film will ‘introduce him to the wider world’.

Moore initially worked from biographies and photographs, but later, ‘I could go out to Bletchley Park and spend a day looking around. It was surreal, because I’d been reading and writing about it for ages. You see a room and tell yourself, I’ve written a scene in that room.’ His visit conferred an acute sense of responsibility ‘to get it right for the people who were there’. ‘I’m really happy we could shoot at Bletchley Park,’ Tyldum says. ‘For the crew and cast, it’s powerful to be where events actually happened. I would give thanks to everybody at Bletchley Park – they have been so supportive and helpful. They lent us a lot of props and equipment – the Enigma machines we use are all real.’

‘Pay attention,’ instructs Cumberbatch’s opening voiceover. Moore weaves together three strands of the story: Turing’s formative schooldays, his work at Bletchley Park and his later arrest for gross indecency. The non-linear narrative, shuttling between the decades, suits the cryptic hero: ‘You’ve just defeated Nazism with a crossword puzzle,’ a colleague marvels. ‘Turing was obsessed by puzzles, so we wanted the story itself to be a puzzle,’ Moore points out. ‘The audience tries to unravel Alan just as he is trying to unravel Enigma.’ Talk of awards is already buzzing around Cumberbatch’s performance. ‘Benedict brings his own intelligence to the role,’ location manager David Broder tells me. ‘He did his own research, he visited Bletchley Park – I can’t think of a better actor to play Turing.’ Cumberbatch’s precise voice is periodically slurred by a stammer, as if Turing’s speech stumbles

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‘Turing could be irascible,’ writer Graham Moore concedes. ‘But I love writing characters who are driven. He was such a passionate, wilful person’

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The Bletchley Park Mansion ballroom was appropriated in The Imitation Game to become the Codebreakersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; bar, a location for key scenes

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‘I’m really happy we could shoot at Bletchley Park,’ Tyldum says. ‘For the crew and cast, it’s powerful to be where events really happened’

to catch up with rapid thought. He is impervious to banter and flirtation, devoted to his ‘universal machine’, but building a comradely affection with fellow Codebreaker Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley as a singular woman in a masculine world).

The Imitation Game screenwriter Graham Moore

‘The film was always intended to be a tribute to Alan Turing,’ says Moore. ‘We wanted to convey him as accurately as we could.’ This meant honouring the frets and failings of a man who many found difficult. ‘He could be irascible,’ the writer concedes. ‘But I love writing characters who are driven. He was such a passionate, wilful person. He’s not a sad sack – even at the end, he never bemoaned his fate.’ Tyldum adds: ‘The movie is in many ways an investigation and a mystery – who is Alan Turing? The framework of a police investigation works very well, because that’s also how it felt to us.’ Codes, Turing explains, are only baffling until you find the key. The whole world is like that for him – a series of accepted codes he simply doesn’t understand. ‘Mother says I’m just an odd duck,’ confides the film’s younger Turing. Repression, secrecy and evasion are archetypal British themes: did the Norwegians and Americans involved in the making of the movie find it unfamiliar

material? ‘It was very relatable,’ Tyldum insists. ‘I was an outsider looking in, but in some ways the story is about outsiders. They were a very eclectic bunch of people who came together with new, original ideas. Turing was an outsider because of his sexuality, and his revolutionary ideas – to me, it’s a tribute to outsiders.’ For his part, Moore chuckles: ‘Even though I am from Chicago, I am no stranger to cultural and emotional repression. I have parents too – we’ll leave it at that.’ What most impressed Moore about the story? ‘The incredible culture of secrecy at Bletchley Park. That amount of keeping mum is not something Americans would be capable of. In the UK, you had a generation of people who did tremendous, world-altering work, and then didn’t tell a soul for 30, 40 years.’ This also poses problems for a filmmaker dealing with such highly charged historical material. ‘It’s a never-ending challenge,’ Tyldum says, ‘how to make something thrilling and engaging yet remain true to itself. We wanted to get the feel of the bustling life of Bletchley Park and the pressure inside the Hut. You have to take the essence of the story and stay true to that.’

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‘The movie is in many ways a mystery – who is Alan Turing? The framework of a police investigation works very well, because that’s also how it felt to us’

Broder doggedly pursues the atmosphere he needs. On his laptop, he shows me a huge database of more than 7,000 archive and original images he compiled. He auditioned 69 houses to represent Turing’s home, and reckons he visited ‘every street in south-east England’ before finding somewhere relatively unmodernised with an eye-catching staircase. His personal passion is for landscape photography, and he was concerned to reflect the characteristic countryside around Bletchley – ‘those greens and browns have a certain tone.’ The small town of Chesham plays the village, but Broder secured Turing’s own school, Sherbourne in Dorset, including classrooms that the young man himself had used.

At just 41, as Moore says, ‘Turing’s life ended in such tragedy and horror.’ But does he feel the story has a contemporary resonance? Undoubtedly. ‘On a gay rights and human rights level. It was not so long ago that homosexuality was criminalised in the UK, and there are parts of the world where it is still criminalised. The revelations about the activities of GCHQ and the NSA were coming up as I was writing; Turing and his colleagues were in effect the first employees at GCHQ. The key, then as now, is that secrecy breeds secrecy – when you keep one secret, you then have to keep more.’ He also notes that work by this most private of men now promotes ceaseless communication and unbounded over-sharing. ‘There’s an irony there.’

David Broder was already steeped in the material, because, in a nice coincidence, he had also worked on the last major film about the Codebreakers: Enigma (2001), starring Kate Winslet and based on Robert Harris’s novel. At that time, he recalls, before Bletchley Park had begun its restoration, the Enigma team chose not to shoot the glossy thriller there. ‘The house has been chopped around a bit, it’s hemmed in by other buildings,’ he says. ‘But there have been massive changes since then.’ In The Imitation Game, Fawley Court – Ian Fleming’s childhood home – stands in for the house, and the disused airbase at RAF Bicester represents the Codebreakers’ Huts. But there’s a star appearance by the Bletchley Park ballroom, which in the film became a bar for the young Codebreakers. Broder relished using the actual location for these key scenes which test Turing’s halting social skills. ‘The staff couldn’t have been more helpful, and for the actors it was very important. It adds something to the movie.’

Top: Director Morten Tyldum on the set of The Imitation Game Bottom: Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing arriving for a recruitment exercise in London Bletchley Park Magazine

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INSIDE STORY EXPERIENCE THE NEW BLETCHLEY PARK This year has seen Bletchley Park and many of its once derelict buildings transformed into a first-class heritage site. Visitors can now unravel its incredible history through a variety of new exhibitions and experiences. The renewed Block C, Huts and Mansion rooms ensure Bletchley Parkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s story is more accessible than ever, while retaining the original heart and atmosphere of one of the most important historical sites of World War Two.

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INSIDE STORY EXPERIENCE THE NEW BLETCHLEY PARK

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INSIDE STORY EXPERIENCE THE NEW BLETCHLEY PARK

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VISITOR INFORMATION OPENING TIMES Bletchley Park is open to visitors daily except 24, 25, 26 December and 1 January.

Please note that the information above does not apply to Group Visitors. We offer discounts for groups of 12 or more people.

WINTER OPENING (1 November to 28 February) From 9.30am to 4.00pm.

ADULTS £15.00

Please note the gates will open at the times stated above and limited, free parking is available on-site. Please be aware that a visit to Bletchley Park involves both indoor and outdoor activities. Please wear outdoor clothing and footwear to ensure a safe and enjoyable visit. Bletchley Park has full disabled access throughout the site. A limited number of wheelchairs are available for visitors to use while on-site and pre-booking is essential, call + 44 (0) 1908 640404. Please note: although wheelchairs are made available for visitors to use, we cannot provide wheelchair assistants/pushers. Admission price entitles you to an Annual Season Ticket, which is valid for as many visits as you would like during the 12 month period from the time of your first visit. Your admission fee includes complimentary use of the newly-launched Multimedia Guide.

CONCESSIONS (Over 60s and students with valid ID) £13.00 CHILDREN 12 TO 16 £9.00 CHILDREN UNDER 12 (With friends and family only. Groups of children with clubs, such as Cub Scouts, should contact us in advance.) Free FAMILY TICKET (Two adults + two children aged 12 to 16) £34.00 Also available for visitors to Bletchley Park, but operating independently of the Bletchley Park Trust, is the The National Museum of Computing - An independent museum tracing the development of the computer from Colossus to the modern-day and housing a working replica of Colossus. This museum is located on the Bletchley Park site and charges its own admission fees.

SUMMER OPENING (1 March to 31 October) From 9.30am to 5.00pm.

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MEMBERSHIP EVENTS Join the Friends of Bletchley Park and be the first to see new exhibitions and receive priority booking for all other events. To join, visit www.bletchleypark.org.uk, call +44 (0)1908 272652, or email friends@bletchleypark.org.uk

EXHIBITION PRIVATE VIEWS COMING SOON… A PRIVATE VIEW OF THE GCHQ ARCHIVES Sunday 22 March 2015 (1–4pm) We are digitising our archives with a view to publishing online in 2015. We invite Friends of Bletchley Park into the archives for a rare opportunity to view the documents, secret codes and spy messages before anyone else. Hosted by the Senior Archivist and Curator of Bletchley Park. Tea, coffee and cakes will be served on this unique family day out. RSVP to friends@bletchleypark.org.uk, or telephone 01908 272652. WORLD WAR ONE – THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK

BLETCHLEY PARK PRESENTS... As part of the benefits of membership, Friends receive two weeks priority booking for this popular lecture series held at Bletchley Park each month. Tickets are £20 per person for each lecture. Tickets are available for Friends of Bletchley Park from 1 December by contacting the Bletchley Park shop on 01908 272684. Normal tickets are on sale from 2 January 2015 and will be available online. FORTHCOMING LECTURES THIS SPRING SEASON 15 March 2015 Michael Smith Bletchley Park Trustee and author Michael Smith talks about his new book, The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories, focusing on the women who worked at Bletchley Park in World War Two. 19 April 2015 Victor Madeira Victor Madeira talks about his recent book, Britannia and the Bear: The Anglo-Russian Intelligence Wars, 1917–1929, examining the first Cold War.

21 June 2015 Taylor Downing Taylor Downing talks about his recent book, Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code Breakers and Propagandists of the Great War. 19 July 2015 Sinclair McKay Sinclair McKay recounts the story of RAF Fighter Command to tie in with the 75th Anniversary of The Battle of Britain.

17 May 2015 Jerry White Jerry White talks about his recent book, Zeppelin Nights – London in the First World War, looking at the Zeppelin air raids in World War One as a prelude to the major new World War One exhibition opening at Bletchley Park in June.

Thursday 4 June 2015 (6–8pm) A new major exhibition with a fresh perspective on the story of World War One, revealing the history of the British Intelligence Service to commemorate the 100th anniversary events around the country. A private view for Friends of Bletchley Park will be held before this exhibition opens to the public in mid-June.

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MY BLETCHLEY SARAH HARDING

When I was young, one of the first things I was taught was how to spell my name in Morse code, and my mother would tell me stories about being in signals during the war. In the 1970s I watched a television play called The Imitation Game, set in Bletchley Park, about a young woman Codebreaker. I knew nothing about the place, and said to my mother: ‘Is that anything like your war?’ She said: ‘I was there, that’s where I did my signals.’ Gradually, I understood the tremendous importance of Bletchley Park. She’d been a housewife and mother like the women in The Bletchley Circle, and she came alive when she talked about the war. I started asking her about it, but I think it’s very difficult to remember the details: after the war they were told to bury it and wipe it. This year the script for The Bletchley Circle landed on my desk without anyone knowing there was any connection. It was like two sides coming together. When researching, I went to a talk given by a Veteran in Devon. I told him my mother 48

‘I just hope it makes my mother feel recognised and proud’ was at Bletchley Park and asked how I could find out more. He said to look on the Roll of Honour, so I went on the website, and there she was, Dorothy Mary Thompson. It confirmed she was there between 1943 and 1945. She was a young woman who had actually left school at 15; she wasn’t a clever university Codebreaker. I always thought everyone at Bletchley Park was an Oxbridge mathematician, but I’ve now realised there were a lot of very bright women there whose skills were based on absolute accuracy and focus. One of the things that mother always did, apart from Morse code, was play piano and sing alto in a choir. That was the other thread – the musical ear.

From the Roll of Honour, I found that you could apply for a badge and certificate. Just after my mother’s 90th birthday, I filled in the application, and this year they arrived. She said: ‘What’s all this about? I didn’t do anything.’ I told her it said ‘David Cameron thanks you for your effort’, and that she hadn’t just been a housewife and mother. She had contributed, because everybody’s skills counted. I think The Bletchley Circle is a real gift to those women, because it’s valuing what they did. It is about Bletchley Park, but it’s also about women of that generation and what society did to them. Instead of recognising their skills, they were just told to go back to their pigeonholes. I was thrilled to be asked to be a part of it. The characters aren’t just patting themselves on the back; they’re rolling up their sleeves and getting on with it. You’re invited as an audience to share a secret world. I just hope it makes my mother feel recognised and proud.

After discovering that her mother had worked in signals during the war, Sarah Harding was approached to direct an ITV series about Bletchley Park Veterans turned sleuths. She spoke to the Bletchley Park Podcast about the coming together of her mother’s story and helping to create The Bletchley Circle

Sarah Harding was speaking to Katherine Lynch, the Bletchley Park Trust’s Media Manager

Bletchley Park Magazine

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14/11/2014 14:13

MY BLETCHLEY SARAH HARDING

Bletchley Park Magazine

Sarah Harding was speaking to Katherine Lynch, the Bletchley Park Trust’s Media Manager Bletchley Park Magazine

Bletchley Park Magazine