Extra - E33 - Sarah Harding – Bletchley Circle Director

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2014

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

February 2014

This is the full length version* of our exclusive interview with Sarah Harding, Director of the second two-part story in series two of the hit ITV drama, The Bletchley Circle.

In this month’s Bletchley Park Podcast & the first part of this EXTRA Sarah tells us about her mother, Dorothy Harding (nee Thompson) who was a Wireless Operator / Morse slip reader at Bletchley Park 1943-1945. It was a happy coincidence that Sarah had that personal connection to Bletchley Park when The Bletchley Circle script landed on her desk.

Sarah has had a long and distinguished career directing theatre, film & TV dramas including Coronation Street, Queer as Folk and Agatha Christie’s Marple & Poirot, to list just a few. We talk about her life behind the camera & how the service given by Veterans such as her mother led to her generation having the freedom to pursue such careers.

Now, her mother has enjoyed the series & hopes “she will smile, feel recognised and proud.”

If you have already listen to this month's main Podcast, then the new material starts at 15:48 into this episode.

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#BPark, #BletchleyPark, #Enigma, #ITV, #TheBletchleyCircle, #ladynerds, #audiowrangler, #mcfontaine

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.
0:37.1	Welcome to another Bletchley Park podcast Extra.
0:41.2	Sarah Harding has had a long and distinguished career directing theatre and TV.
0:45.9	She was put in charge of the second two-part story in series two of the ITV drama, The Bletchley Circle.
0:52.2	What no one realised at the outset was that Sarah's mother worked at Bletchley Park
0:56.1	during World War II, so she felt a very special connection with the characters she was
1:00.5	bringing to life.
1:02.1	After the hurly-burly of filming, Sarah came back and we had a long and fascinating conversation
1:07.0	about her mother, her career, and the stalwarts of Bletchley Park. The
1:30.3	The What's your first memory of hearing about or becoming aware of Bletchley Park?
2:00.0	Well, I first became aware of Bletchley Park in the 70s.
2:05.6	Just when everyone started talking about Enigma and it all surfaced, when I was young, one
2:12.6	of the first things I was taught was to spell my name in Morse code.
2:16.6	And my mum used to tell me stories about how she
2:19.7	was in signals during the war and taught me Morse. I thought no more of this. She's had a very
2:25.8	exciting war. A few people would visit who she spent time with the war in. And then in the 70s,
2:32.5	I actually watched a television play called The Imitation
2:35.9	game, which was set in Bletchley Park, and it was about a young woman codebreaker who met
2:41.5	somebody who was based on Turing. Now, I knew nothing about these. And I said to my mother,
2:46.6	is that anything like your war? And she said, well, I was actually there.
2:51.3	I was at Bletchley.
	...

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