Fwd: OBITUARY : Helene Aldwinckle, BP

Friday May 08 2020

OBITUARY : Helene Aldwinckle
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Bletchley Park codebreaker and player of a small but important role in 
the special relationship between Britain and the US

-  Helene Aldwinckle thought her American colleagues brought
    “a breath of fresh air” to Bletchley Park

When the intelligence-sharing BRUSA Agreement was signed between Britain 
and the United States in May 1943, it followed a difficult period of 
relations between the two intelligence communities. The UK had been 
reluctant to share how it was breaking German Enigma codes at Bletchley 
Park, fearing that “loud and outspoken” Americans would give away its 
best-kept secret.

The Americans, for their part, thought that the British were “aloof and 
buttoned up”. So when the first contingent of 50 American service 
personnel was due to arrive at Bletchley Park that August, its deputy 
director, Commander Edward Travis, asked the newly appointed head of Hut 
6, Stuart Milner-Barry, to nominate someone to organise the Americans’ 
induction and training programme.

The person he chose was a young Scottish codebreaker he had recruited 
from Aberdeen University the previous summer. Helene Aldwinckle
( née Taylor ) proved a shrewd choice. Unlike some of her more 
blue-stockinged or upper-class contemporaries, she had an innate ability 
to get  on with everyone, and her vivacious personality and quick wits 
soon put the Americans at ease.

In an interview she gave to Bletchley Park Museum’s oral history project 
in 2014, she recalled that the Americans were “enormous fun and a breath 
of fresh air in a rather stuffy environment”. Many went on to occupy 
senior roles in public life, such as William Bundy, foreign affairs 
adviser to President Kennedy and President Johnson, and Howard Porter, 
who became a professor of classics at Columbia University. The BRUSA 
Agreement was replaced by the UKUSA Agreement in 1946 between GCHQ and 
the NSA, and the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing arrangement that 
continues to this day.

Helene Lovie Taylor was born in 1920 in Aberdeen, the eldest daughter of 
Alexander Taylor, a commercial salesman, and his wife Helen
( née Trail ). She was educated at Aberdeen Academy and won a 
scholarship to Aberdeen University, reading English and French. In 1942 
she was invited for an interview in London for the Foreign Office, where 
she was identified as a candidate for the Government Code & Cypher 
School at Bletchley Park. After a second interview Milner-Barry 
recruited her, one of few women offered a Foreign Office position at 
assistant principal level.

Hut 6 was responsible for breaking Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht codes. After 
a year in its Registration Room and nine months running the training 
“school”, she transferred to the Quiet Room in Hut 6, where she analysed 
signals traffic for call signs and sign-offs to help to break the daily 
codes. After VE Day she co-wrote the official history of Hut 6, deemed 
so sensitive that it was declassified only in 2006.

In February 1945 she married John Aldwinckle, a flight lieutenant in the 
RAF she had met as an officer cadet in Aberdeen. Helene left the Foreign 
Office, as all women who married were required to do, a bar lifted only 
in 1973. She had four children, who survive her : Richard, a retired 
sustainability consultant; Linda, a former university lecturer; Pamela, 
who worked as a stage director; and Diana, Lady Browne, widow of Sir 
Nicholas Browne, former ambassador to Iran and Denmark. Aldwinckle’s 
husband died in 2012.

In the 1950s she accompanied John, who was then working for MI6, to 
Cologne and Berlin, where he became one of many betrayed by the double 
agent George Blake. Helene worked as a broadcaster with Westdeutscher 
Rundfunk and the British Forces Network, reporting on cultural events. 
These included Maria Callas’s historic performance in 'Lucia di 
Lammermoor' in 1955, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Aldwinckle also 
acted in plays with the Berlin Amateur Dramatic Society and continued to 
broadcast as she accompanied her husband on postings in Britain, Germany 
and France.

In 1967 she became a translator of art books from German into English 
for Thames and Hudson, including a biography of the Russian artist El 
Lissitzky. The family then had spells in Rome, Brussels, Mons and 
London. Aged 54, she began a new career as a gallerist. Working 
initially at the Medici Gallery in the West End, she then spent a few 
years at the Oxford Gallery, before returning to the Medici as its 
manager in 1979. She transformed it from an old watercolours and prints 
establishment into a thriving modern gallery, promoting contemporary 
artists and ceramicists such as Robert King and Mary Rich. She also 
recruited and encouraged a cohort of young artists as staff. Bruce 
Munro, the light installation artist, remembered her as a dynamic force 
who could “sell snow to the Eskimos”. She retired in 1986.

-  Hut 6 at work

Aldwinckle was one of life’s enthusiasts. She was an excellent raconteur 
and mimic, whose stories about the interesting people she met and 
episodes in her life invariably became the focus of dinner parties. She 
had a photographic memory, which played a part in her recruitment into 
codebreaking.

Still active into her nineties, she attended the opening of the restored 
Hut 6 at Bletchley Park in 2014. In 2019, aged 98, she was appointed a 
chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur for her role at Bletchley in the 
liberation of France, and was personally thanked for her wartime work by 
Theresa May at her last prime minister’s questions.


Helene Aldwinckle, Bletchley Park codebreaker, was born on October 26, 
1920. She died on April 24, 2020, aged 99



https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/helene-aldwinckle-obituary-v9fkmf36n

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff52536d2-905f-11ea-a1ff-1dde97c98818.jpg?crop=3718%2C2091%2C90%2C1043&resize=1180

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/%2Fmethode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Ff329a9d0-905f-11ea-a1ff-1dde97c98818.jpg?crop=1875%2C1250%2C50%2C58&resize=773

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https://bletchleypark.org.uk/news/bletchley-park-veteran-receives-frances-highest-honour

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https://www.tombrake.co.uk/brake_takes_helene_aldwinckle_s_legion_d_honneur_to_prime_minister_s_questions

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https://www.pressreader.com/uk/scottish-daily-mail/20190727/282316796639000

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