When she speaks of Bletchley, a light comes into her eyes

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 6 November 2015

⏱️ 1 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

November 2015

Sarah Harding’s mother remembers Bletchley Park as a happy place. Dorothy Harding, nee Thompson, worked as a Morse slip reader in the Communications Centre from 1943 to the end of the war.

Many years later, Sarah directed the hit ITV drama, The Bletchley Circle, about four fictional women who worked at the Government Code and Cypher School during World War Two and, some ten years later, regrouped in secret to solve mysteries including murder.

Now Sarah is joining a worldwide community of Veterans’ relatives, who are being offered the chance to buy a commemorative brick in the Codebreakers’ Wall and cement their connection to this piece of British history.

Visit the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour to find your Codebreaker relative and email [email protected] to find out more about how you can celebrate that connection.

Image: Sarah Harding on location at Bletchley Park during the filming of The Bletchley Circle. ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2Veteran, #History

Transcript

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0:00.0	When our mum's 91 and she lives near Bristol, and when she speaks of the wartime years, a light comes into her eyes.
0:15.6	Those are the words of Sarah Harding, whose mother Dorothy worked as a Morse slip reader in Block E in 1945.
0:22.4	Sarah is a member of a global community of Bletchley Park veterans' relatives
0:26.6	who will be among the first to be offered the chance to cement their family pride
0:30.6	into the very fabric of the site by buying a commemorative brick in the Co-Breaker's War.
0:36.7	Recently, she was reminiscing about her time there, and she fell into a reverie.
0:42.2	An hour later, she said to me, I can see the hut clearly. It's all in front of my eyes.
0:46.7	I can't leave Bletchley. Is it a happy place, mum, I asked. Oh, yes, she said. Then I said,
0:54.0	so why don't you stay there for a while?
0:56.4	If a member of your family worked at Bletchley Park or one of its outstations, look for their
1:01.1	entry on the online role of honour and email friends at bletchleypark.org.org to find out more
1:07.7	about how you can celebrate your connection to this unique story.

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