Nee Sarah Norton, worked as a codebreaker and translator at Bletchley Park

23 January 2014

How Sam Cam's sexy grandma helped beat the Nazis... and her deadly weapon 
- her endlessly long legs

- Sarah Baring was the mother of Samantha Cameron's stepfather
- The attractive aristocrat played a vital role in the Second World War
- Nee Sarah Norton, worked as a codebreaker and translator at Bletchley 
  Park
- She revealed her wartime work in a private memoir published before her 
  death last year

By Guy Walters

Sarah Baring played a vital role in protecting the lives of thousands 
during the war with her work at Bletchley Park

For Sarah Baring, the war against Nazi Germany started in the summer of 
1937.

Aged just 17, she had been sent by her aristocratic parents to spend a few 
months in Munich to learn German and study art.

Installed with two other English girls in the home of an impoverished 
count and his wife, Sarah soon noticed that "an atmosphere of fear 
pervaded the city". The cause was the growing power of the Nazi party.

What Sarah and her friends found particularly repellent was the posting of 
a vehemently anti-semitic newspaper on nearly every street corner, calling 
for the Jews to be persecuted. She and her friends decided to act.

One day, they visited Hitler's favourite tea rooms, where they sat at a 
table as close as possible to the German dictator.

They stared at him and his cronies Goebbels and Goering with as much 
obvious distaste as they could muster.

Hitler, Sarah later recalled, was like a spectre with piercing black eyes 
that drilled into you.

"His hair was carefully brushed obliquely across his forehead," she later 
wrote, "but despite the intimidating appearance, the effect was rather 
comical."..../snip/


....lthough she died at the age of 93 last February, she was mentioned by 
David Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions a few days ago when he 
welcomed the recent Royal Pardon given to the brilliant codebreaker Alan 
Turing, who had been prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual offences and 
chemically castrated.

In passing, Cameron referred to Sarah - the mother of his wife Samantha's 
stepfather, Viscount Astor - who had worked with Turing during the war at 
Bletchley Park, the intelligence centre in Buckinghamshire where 
mathematical geniuses cracked Nazi codes, saving hundreds of thousands of 
lives and shortening the conflict by years.

Cameron praised the work done at Bletchley Park and said that Sarah had 
spoken "incredibly highly" of Turing.

For decades, her natural modesty meant she hardly mentioned her vital 
contribution to Britain's war effort. However, before she died, Sarah left 
a small, privately published memoir that revealed the truth about her role 
in the war.

Although her friends thought she was employed by some boring committee 
that awarded medals, Sarah in fact spent the war guarding some of 
Bletchley Park's most sensitive secrets.

She played a vital role indexing and translating the thousands of German 
cables cracked by the code-breakers.

Like many, Sarah fell into her work at Bletchley Park. For the first few 
months of the war, she continued to live the high life in London and did 
not allow the inconvenience of the Blitz to spoil her fun..../snip/


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2544346/How-Sam-Cams-sexy-grandma-helped-beat-Nazis-deadly-weapon-endlessly-long-legs.html

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9873999/Sarah-Baring.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02482/baring_2482638b.jpg