Bletchley Park

April 2024 Women were the backbone of Bletchley Park during World War Two. At its peak in January 1945, the workforce was 75% female, but even at the start of the war, women comprised a significant portion of GC&CS’s numbers. Women were recruited in a variety of ways, but a significant quantity of them, particularly early in the war, were selected direct from prominent universities such as Oxford, St Andrews and Cambridge. Over the last few years, a team of members of Newnham College Cambridge have been researching the women from their college who worked at Bletchley Park and in other wartime roles. They have discovered, astonishingly, more than 70 students and alumnae were recruited to BP. After close collaboration with the team at Bletchley Park Trust, a new exhibition presents their findings and reveals some hidden histories. In this episode, recorded at Newnham College, Bletchley Park’s Head of Content, Erica Munro, meets the three women behind this new research and we visit the exhibition to find