E74 - Sound and Vision

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2018

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

July 2018

This month we swing a shoe, meet the artist exploring the layers and fragmentation of the Bletchley Park story and hear from a Foreign Office clerk who thought she was going to be a spy.

Hear what happened when Bletchley Park played host to a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest swing dance lesson. The swing dance club, JiveSwing, led the couples, many of whom who’d turned out in their best vintage gear, in a half hour lesson followed by a three minute dance, to take a crack at the record.

Mary Kenyon had visions of being a sultry secret agent when she was called up to a mysterious sounding job at the Foreign Office in 1943. But she was sent to Bletchley Park where she collected and collated messages, working alongside the luminary codebreaker Asa Briggs. Mary recalled her vital war work in Hut 6 when she told her story to Bletchley Park’s Oral History Project in 2014.

Also in this episode, we meet Sally Annett, an artist whose vision is brought to life in a new exhibition in Block B. She explores the themes of fragmentation and layers - as they apply to the way the Government Code and Cipher School was organised, and makes a nod to the people whose contribution is not recorded in the Roll of Honour, because neither they nor their families have put their names forward.

Listen and swing along to all the above, in this month’s episode.

In memoriam, Mary Kenyon (1922-2017)

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Veteran, #WW2, #SwingDance

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.
0:44.6	Welcome to the July 2018 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast, sound and vision.
0:50.5	Bletchley Park is alive with things to see and hear this summer and in this episode, we'll take you to a dance, meet an innovative artist, and hear from an erstwhile
0:55.4	clerk from the foreign office who thought she was going to be a spy. Mary Kenyon worked in
1:00.9	Hut 6, collating and organising vital messages alongside Asa Briggs and Boris Karloff's niece. She thought
1:08.6	she was in for a much more glamorous posting than the dark wooden
1:12.3	huts of the secret intelligence operations squirreled away in the Buckinghamshire countryside,
1:17.1	but she knuckled down and soon made friends and lasting memories. And we meet an artist who's
1:23.2	been inspired by the many layers of the Bletchley Park story. Sally Annett takes up this theme in a new
1:29.1	exhibition, along with the ways in which the operation was fragmented, and its story remains so today.
1:36.1	But first, a hot summer Saturday was the perfect setting for a swing dance on the lawn at Bletchley
1:41.4	Park. Couples rolled up, many in 1940s fashions, and swung a mightily efficient shoe to help
1:48.0	Bletchley Park in its attempt to sashay into the record books.
1:51.7	Let's take a look back at how the day unfolded.
1:54.2	I guarantee you'll be tapping your toes. It's going to be brilliant tonight.
2:07.6	Hello, I can help you over.
2:11.6	Oh, hello.
2:12.6	Hello, darling.
2:14.6	Hello.
2:15.6	Welcome to Bletchley Park. Thank you.
2:18.3	Haven't been for so long.
	...

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