Join us on Sunday evenings at 8 for the Bletchley Girls. A 3 part radio drama starting 28th February on NHR.
“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.”
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. It’s a phenomenal task – “We must know what Hitler knows” – and they work against the clock – and the odds. 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 Girls is a stage play that was due to be performed in May and June 2020 at a number of Gloucestershire venues. The coronavirus pandemic put a stop to that for now, and so the creative team adapted the play for the radio. The finished product will be broadcast as part of the Gloucester History Festival on 17, 18 and 19 September. The radio play will be distributed through the Hospital Broadcast Association and the Community Radio Network, including both Winchcombe and Corinium radio stations in Cirencester. It will also be available on Jenny Wren Productions’ YouTube channel ( www.jennywrenproductions.co.uk).
Codebreaking workshops by Bletchley Park that are aligned with the play will be available by video to Gloucestershire school children aged 11-14 around the History Festival.
Director Jenny Wicks said “It’s certainly been a tricky few months for us, but we’ve risen to the challenge and have enjoyed adapting the play and learning some new skills. This is the first radio play any of the team have made, but we’re very lucky to have the help of Boom Sound Studios, who work on major TV productions and films such as The Crown and Call the Midwife. It’s exciting to be able to bring our creation to audiences both in Gloucestershire, as we usually do, but also far and wide.”
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