Kate Quinn interviews Osla, Mab, and Beth from THE ROSE CODE

“The reigning queen of historical fiction” —  Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue 

The New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Huntress and The Alice Network returns with another heart-stopping World War II story of three female code breakers at Bletchley Park and the spy they must root out after the war is over.

Kate Quinn interviews Osla, Mab, and Beth from THE ROSE CODE

KQ: So, I know you ladies all worked as codebreakers of Bletchley Park during the war—

Beth [sitting up straight]: Where did you hear that?! Who’s been talking? This is a serious violation of the Official Secrets Act. 

KQ: I’m privy to this information, I promise. I’d like to talk to you ladies about the work you did— 

Beth: No. That would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act. 

Mab [sighing]: Beth takes her oath seriously. We all do, but she takes it to another level. 

Osla: Well, if the ladies of BP are finally getting the blinking credit they deserve, I’m all for it. The work we did was critical. 

KQ: Can you three tell me a bit about yourselves, where you came from before you landed at Bletchley Park? 

Mab: I’m an East Ender. First one in my family to want something more than an early marriage and a factory job. I came to Bletchley looking for a better way forward, and hopefully a decent husband. Not thinking I’d land a millionaire or a duke—life isn’t a novel, I’m not stupid—but I thought I might find some nice, educated gentleman to put a ring on my finger, and that would be a step up. Not just for me, but my little sister Lucy—I didn’t want her leaving school at fourteen to go to work, the way I did. 

Osla: I was a debutante: curtsy to the King & Queen in ostrich feathers, London Season, the whole bally circus. I’m a fizzing sort to invite to a party, but I was getting a bit tired of just being the silly deb in everyone’s eyes. The war came round and I wanted to do my bit doing something more important than filing and categorizing.

Beth: I was born and raised at Bletchley village not far from Bletchley Park. I lived with my mother and father. That’s all I feel comfortable saying under the Official Secrets Act. 

KQ: How were you three recruited?

Mab: I was tops in my secretarial course, recruited out of there. All I was looking for was an office job, something better than hawking lipsticks at Selfridges or working at a shoe factory, and before I know it I’m in the middle of Buckinghamshire being told I’m going to help break Axis military codes. 

Osla: I had absolutely topping finishing-school German, so that’s what landed me at BP. They needed linguists to translate all the bally stuff the codebreakers decrypted. 

Beth: I refuse to answer because it would be a violation of the Official Secrets Act. 

Mab [exchanging glances with Osla]: Beth was one of the big brains at BP—one of the cryptanalysts whose job was to wedge a foot in the door of all that mass of code so the machines had half a chance of cracking it the rest of the way open. When Osla and I first met her—the two of us met on the train on the way to Bletchley, you see, and then we got billeted with Beth’s family in the village—we’d never have guessed she was such a bloody genius…

Osla: Yes, she was this quiet little thing always looking at her own toes. But she could do a crossword in ink in eight minutes flat, and I just had a feeling, so I put her name forward. Next thing you know, she’s cracking Axis battle plans. We’d never have won the Battle of Matapan without Beth—put her in front of a block of code, she’s an absolute corker. 

Beth: [silence, but looks pleased]

KQ: So Beth broke into the Axis ciphers, Osla translated the resulting decrypted intelligence. Mab, where did you work?

Mab: The codebreaking machines—in between Beth and Osla on the chain. They were called bombes; don’t ask me why. You asked questions at BP and you just got told “You dinnae need to know” by some irate supervisor from Aberdeen. But the bombes were designed by Alan Turing—you’ve heard of him? Back during the war he was holed up in Hut 8 in Bletchley Park, cracking German naval codes—and it was all women from the Women’s Royal Naval Service who operated the machines. Well, and me. I wasn’t WRNS, but they needed a fill-in and you had to be tall to work the bombes because they’re so big, so they asked for the tallest girl in Hut 6. I’m 5’11 in my stocking feet, so there you are. 

KQ: Was the work stressful?

Osla: Was it! Enough to make you want to get positively kippered once your shift was done. 

KQ: Kippered? 

Osla: Fizzed, bottled, sauced. I’d run up to London every chance I could and dance my head off just to work the strain out. 

Mab: We all found ways of coping, or else you’d end up in the infirmary on a three-day rest crying your eyes out. Those bombe machines, the never-ending clackety-clack and the little electric shocks and the oil spray everywhere, it could really get to you. 

Beth: I refuse to answer because it would be a violation of—

KQ: Understood. What did you ladies do in your time off, when you weren’t codebreaking?

Mab: We formed a literary society—a book club, you’d call it. Osla and I had the idea on the train to Bletchley, really, when we realized we were both reading the same book: Vanity Fair. So we dragged in all the BP friends we could, and started reading a book a month. The first book was a Lewis Carroll, so after that we always called ourselves the Mad Hatters, after the Mad Hatter’s tea parties. 

Osla: We read some lovely books. Lots of Agatha Christie…Well, there was a bit of a tempest in the teapot about that. MI-5 got involved, nearly. 

KQ: One last question—did you three ever get a chance to dust off your codebreaking skills after the war? 

Beth: I’m sorry, but that would—

Osla: —be a violation of—

Mab: —the Official Secrets Act. 

KQ: Right. Thank you, ladies!

—

Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with “The Alice Network”, “The Huntress,” and “The Rose Code.” All have been translated into multiple languages. Kate and her husband now live in San Diego with three rescue dogs.

Find out more about kate here: http://www.katequinnauthor.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KateQuinnAuthor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KateQuinnAuthor

THE ROSE CODE

1940. As England prepares to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes. Vivacious debutante Osla is the girl who has everything—beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses—but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator of decoded enemy secrets. Imperious self-made Mab, product of east-end London poverty, works the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and looks for a socially advantageous husband.

Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of secrecy will tear the three apart.

1947. As the royal wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter–the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. A mysterious traitor has emerged from the shadows of their Bletchley Park past, and now Osla, Mab, and Beth must resurrect their old alliance and crack one last code together. But each petal they remove from the rose code brings danger–and their true enemy–closer…

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Category: Interviews, On Writing