The Duchess of Cambridge has spoken of her sadness that her grandmother felt unable to tell her about the important work she did at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
The 37-year-old opened up as she visited the estate near Milton Keynes on Tuesday to see a new exhibition celebrating the role codebreakers played in the D-Day landings almost 75 years ago.
She said her grandmother had been “so sworn to secrecy that she never felt able to tell us” about her work as she was shown a memorial containing the name of her father’s mother and great-aunt, who also worked at Bletchley.
Meeting four women who had worked as codebreakers, and are now in their 90s, she told them they must be “so proud” of their “very important work”, and shared her hopes that a new generation would celebrate them.
It was a return visit for the Duchess, who went to Bletchley in 2014 to retrace the footsteps of her grandmother, Valerie Glassborow and her twin sister Mary.
Both women worked as duty officers, employed as Foreign Office civilians in 1944.
They are known to have been formally employed by the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley and worked in Hut 16.
Meeting schoolchildren who were learning to program using enigma machines, she emphasised the lifesaving work of Bletchley staff during the war and encouraged them to learn more.
“It’s quite interesting how you’re all learning about coding at school, and now you can look back at how it first started,” she said.
“At the time, they couldn’t talk about it could they?” she told Year Six pupils from Akeley Wood Primary School in Milton Keynes.
“My granny and her sister worked here. It’s very cool. When she was alive sadly she could never talk about it. She was so sworn to secrecy that she never felt able to tell us.”
The Duchess also spent time with four women who had worked at Bletchley recalling her “very special trip” in 2014.
“It’s lovely that it’s being celebrated,” she said of their work featured in the new exhibition in the restored Teleprinter Building. “It’s super important. I was just speaking to the children next door and they were saying this [codebreaking task] is really complicated.
“They have got a real appreciation of what you were doing.”
Audrey Mather, a former teleprinter operator, told her: “We haven’t got together like this before. We don’t know each other even though we were here at the same time.”
Elizabeth Diacon, 96, said she had arrived at Bletchley in 1944 believing it to be a “very important calling”.
“You were very important,” the Duchess told her. “It’s lovely that it’s being celebrated. Your families must be very proud.”
As she left she told the small group: “It’s a real honour to meet you.”
As the Duchess was congratulated on her “beautiful family” she replied: “Thank you so much. Louis is keeping us on our toes. I turned around the other day and he was at the top of the slide – I had no idea.”
She took home four cuddly toys, presented to her by pupils – a squirrel, fox, owl and rabbit for her children George, Charlotte and Louis, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new arrival, baby Archie. “They love wild animals,” the Duchess told the children. “They will look after these.”
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