“Germany is winning the war, England’s being bombed into oblivion… and MI6 is depending on a small team of girls working in a freezing hut in the English countryside to break Germany’s most secret code.”

Jenny Wren Productions presents

BLETCHLEY GIRLS

By Lou Beckett

Inside Bletchley Park,Dilly Knox enlists a small team of girls to crack some of the enemy’s toughest codes. Whilst Margaret Rock is a trained statistician, the newest recruit is Mavis Lever, 19 years old and a student of German romantic poetry. A friendship develops between this unlikely pair as pressure mounts on them to decipher intercepts which will impact the course of the war. But it’s not all-night shifts and Enigma machines; there are dances, pranks, and even a touch of romance.

Jenny Wren Productions presents this brand-new radio drama based on the untold true story of two female codebreakers at Bletchley Park at the height of World War II.

Bletchley Girlswas written as a stage play and was due to be performed in May and June 2020 at a number of festivals and venues. The coronavirus pandemic has put a stop to this for now, and so the creative team adapted it for the radio.

The radio play was broadcast in early autumn 2020 as part of Gloucester History Festival and is now being distributed to the UK Community Radio Network and the Hospital Broadcast Association. Episodes are available free directly through

https://www.loubeckett.com/booking-tickets

Tony Comer, recently retired historian at GCHQ, said of the play, ‘Brilliantly brings to life the human element which underpinned everything that happened at Bletchley Park’.

Bletchley Park worked with the playwright, Lou Beckett, to create accompanying codebreaking workshops for school children. These virtual workshops are now available through Bletchley Park with a Bursary scheme for eligible schools. https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/learn/virtual-learning-sessions/bletchley-girls-battle-for-equality

Director Jenny Wicks said “It’s certainly been a tricky few months for us, but we’ve enjoyed adapting the play. We’re very lucky to work with Boom Sound Studios, whose productions includeThe CrownandCall the Midwife. It’s exciting to be able to bring our creation to audiences far and wide.”

Tags: Bletchley Girls, UK Community Radio Network, the Hospital Broadcast, Gloucester History Festival, radio drama, Jenny Wren Productions