Agatha Christie in real-life Bletchley Park spy mystery

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04 February 2013
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imports_WRI_0-pxuv4ybt-100000_80782.jpg Agatha Christie in real-life Bletchley Park spy mystery
During WW2 the crime writer was investigated by M15, who suspected her of having a spy inside the code-breaking centre ...

During WW2 the crime writer was investigated by M15, who suspected her of having a spy inside the code-breaking centre

Suspicions were aroused in intelligence circles when Agatha Christie gave a character in her 1941 Tommy and Tuppence detective novel N or M the name of Major Bletchley.

Bletchley Park was where UK codebreakers - including Dilly Knox, a friend of Christie's - cracked the German Enigma Code. According to a new book by Michael Smith, Bletchley Park - The Code Breakers of Station X (Shire), Dilly Knox was questioned by intelligence officers about what Christie knew.

It turned out, reports the Guardian, that she had named her unlikeable character 'Bletchley' after having being stuck there on a train.

 

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