E31 - Telling The World

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2015

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

February 2015

This month best-selling author, journalist and TV presenter Ben Macintyre talks to us about his latest book, A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal. Ben spoke to us after his sell out talk last year in our Bletchley Park Presents lecture series. Tickets are on sale now for the 2015 talks which already includes Michael Smith, Victor Madeira, Jerry White, Taylor Downing and Sinclair Mackay, with more speakers to be announced soon.

Then we bring you this month’s main event. In The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories, best-selling author and Bletchley Park’s chief historical advisor, Michael Smith, reveals the secrets held for at least 30 years by women including a former ballerina, a convent girl and a student of German literature as well as the debutantes of the title. Seven of those stalwarts of secrecy gathered in the Mansion at Bletchley Park to tell the world’s media. Kerry Howard & Podcast Producer Mark Cotton spoke to three of them, Jean Pitt-Lewis, Margaret Mortimer and Marigold Freeman-Attwood.

Picture: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Codebreakers, #Spy, #ColdWar

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:42.9	Welcome to the February 2015 edition of the Bletchley Park podcast, Telling the World.
0:55.5	This month, seven stalwarts of secrecy lift the lid at last, as they help launch a new book telling their stories and those of another 38 women who worked for the Government Code and Cipher School during World War II.
1:00.5	But first, the best-selling author, journalist and TV presenter Ben McIntyre is one of an ever-growing list of prestigious speakers
1:03.7	who've given talks in the Bletchley Park Presents lecture series.
1:07.8	He held a sold-out audience captive with his fascinating true story of Kim Filby,
1:12.8	history's most famous traitor. Filby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in
1:19.0	history. Agent, double agent, traitor, an enigma. He betrayed every secret of Allied operations
1:25.4	to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War.
1:28.3	Ben told the story of his intimate bond with and systematic betrayal of his two closest friends in the intelligence world.
1:40.3	So how did you first get into the subject of spies?
1:46.6	How did I start with spying?
1:48.2	I guess it was really Agent Zigzag that set me off on this trail.
1:51.7	I got a call from a friend who was in the intelligence services
1:55.3	who alerted me to the fact that a huge file relating to Agent Zigzag was being released.
2:02.7	And this was all the wartime files from Eddie Chapman,
2:06.7	who was our great double agent during the Second World War.
2:09.6	And that kind of set me off on the spy trail.
2:11.5	I had never really intended to write about spies,
2:13.5	although I've always been interested in spies.
2:15.7	The lovely thing about writing about spies
	...

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