B.P.

Dear Harry,

Bletchley Park continues to fascinate, even here in America, even 80 years after the events there in the 1940s. It's due in part, I'm sure, to the move "The Imitation Game", with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Alan Turing. But I was surprised by the number of responses to the brief review I posted in my social media forum (also on Goodreads) of a book called "The Road to Station X: A Memoir of One Woman's Journey Through World War II" by Sarah Baring. Station X is, of course, Bletchley Park, where some of the smartest people in the country were working day and night on the interception and de-coding of vital German military communications. You'll remember Fiona and Vivian, and my auntie Gay, all three "Bletchley Girls" who lived in the Rectory at Aspley Guise during the war years.

I reminded you in an earlier letter of the great shock with which I learned, from another B.P. book, that there was "a parson in this neighborhood" who had drawn the attention of the security services for proving too nosy about what might be happening at that super hush-hush facility, and had been pestering the billitees for information. The offending "parson" was none other than yourself. It was innocent enough, I suppose, more for the fun of flirtation with those attractive young women along with a bit of natural curiosity than to undermine the whole British war effort.

Anyway, here's the brief "review" I posted of the book by Sarah Bating, who would have to be 100 years old or more today, were she still alive. But I suspect she must have left us a while ago: "I had a lot of fun with this book, in part because it took me back to my childhood in England during WWII. The author came from the privileged background of the British peerage, the god-daughter of Earl Mountbatten, and was presented at Court in 1938, shortly before the country went to war with Germany. Living in London during the Blitz, she joined the war effort at a fighter plane factory before her knowledge of German led to her recruitment at Bletchley Park--the now-famous code breaking center for the captured German Enigma machine. Three of the Bletchley girls--but not this one--lived in my own home during the war, so her work there was of special interest to me. Beyond that personal point of interest, though, I greatly enjoyed Sarah Baring's cheerful, can-do approach to everything she was called upon to do (very English!) as well as her modesty and her sharp sense of humor. She's one of those fine, "well-brought-up" people from the upper classes who manages to carry her privileged status without a trace of snobbery and, aside from performing admirable secret war service, is also a fundamentally likable person."

Cheers, then. Your son, Peter