Make And Mend: Sewing in the Second World War

Posted by Lara

“It’s up to you to keep the home fires burning, to see that you and your family stay easy-on-the-eyes. Fortunately, you can be patriotic and pretty both. It’s easy to teach an old wardrobe new tricks, to resurrect the skeletons in your closet and bring them up to date. Come on, take those old knockabouts and turn them into knockouts, keep that glint in Uncle Sam’s eye and still do your stint towards Victory!”

That’s how the Spool Cotton Company enticed American women to sew during World War II. Everyone was asked to do his or her part for the war. Children saved pennies and collected scrap metal. Families planted vegetable gardens. Women learned to cook meals without meat, wheat, and sugar. Other women went to work in factories and farm fields. They also picked up a needle and thread.

4.2.7 4.2.7

Sewing had fallen by the wayside for many Americans…

View original post 329 more words

The Casual Vacancy: BAFTA Q&A

Posted by Lara

Life of Wylie

“OVER my dead body, Andrew…”

Rory Kinnear as Barry Fairbrother in BBC1’s new three-part adaptation of JK Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy.

Jo Rowling’s first novel for an adult audience, published in 2012, became a global best-seller with over six million copies sold to date.

The 3 x 60 minute television adaptation, written by Sarah Phelps and directed by Jonny Campbell, begins on BBC1 at 9pm on Sunday Feb 15.

Set in what appears to be the idyllic English village of Pagford.

Those who have read the 500-page book will know that it deals with how we live today, including issues of community and responsibility.

View original post 6,997 more words

The Bletchley Circle (Season 1 & 2)

Posted by Lara

Movie Reviews

A TV show about intelligent women solving crimes that doesn’t contain gratuitous sex or violence!?!? No wonder you’ve never heard of it!! This show is a British drama about a group of former Bletchley Park code-breakers (working on the same German codes Alan Turing is trying to solve in The Imitation Game). These episodes take place a decade after the war is over. The women have become bored assimilating into ordinary roles of housewives and secretaries and they begin to take on the challenge of using their intellect to solve crimes. At first, I wished the show was about one awesome woman, like Sherlock-esque, who had super-human intellect that could solve patterns, have a photographic memory, etc, but as the show evolves each woman is interesting and realistic and has their own unique qualities that add to the dynamic of them working as a team. How the women work as a team and support each other is…

View original post 72 more words

The Imitation Game + Alan Turing + Joan Clarke: reviews, facts, books, links, useful information

Posted by Lara

Dr Sue Black

Have you seen The Imitation Game starring Keira Knightley and Benedict Cumberbatch? Have you wondered what is historically accurate in the film, what is true and what false? Is Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Alan Turing accurate? Does Keira Knightley’s portrayal of Joan Clarke get over her true character?

This blog post is a collection of links to information that is related to The Imitation Game and will hopefully go some way towards answering questions that you may have about Turing, The Imitation Game and Bletchley Park.

I have been involved with Bletchley Park and known about Alan Turing for over 10 years. I spearheaded a campaign to save Bletchley Park in 2008 which I write about in detail in my forthcoming book Saving Bletchley Park: the story of Bletchley Park and the campaigns to save it. Bletchley Park is now a museum open to the public, do visit if you…

View original post 605 more words

Decoding the Past at Bletchley Park

Posted by Lara

Decoding the Past at Bletchley Park.

Old-School New Year’s Eve: Photos From a Vanished, Wartime New York

Posted by Lara

Alan Turing- A War Against Ignorance

Posted by Lara

I also saw #ImitationGame! My thoughts @ http://on.fb.me/1z8AqfE #ladynerds #TBCW #Cumberbatch #knightley #Turing #BletchleyPark

Dream.Think.Speak

I will prefix this post by saying that if you can, go and see ‘The Imitation Game’, a biopic on Alan Turing. It is inspirational, devastating, and most incredibly, a true story.

Alan Turing was a mathematician. In 1936, as a Cambridge graduate, Turing published ‘On Computable Numbers, With An Application To The Entsheidungsproblem’. (That’s decision problem in German). This paper put forward the notion of a ‘Universal Machine’, a machine that could be used to compute any computable sequence. The idea for the modern computer was born.

Turing got the chance to build on this thesis while at Bletchley Park, the British War time base of code breaking. The focus at Bletchley was cracking the German Enigma machine, which Turing relished tackling “because no one else was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself.” Turing worked alongside Hugh Alexander, who said that Turing’s mind and unique drive…

View original post 565 more words

Bletchley Park: A Glance into the Past

Posted by Lara

J L Stapleton Photography: A Landscape of Dreams

6th August 2013

The first time I’d really heard about the Bletchley Park Museum was last fall when Dr. Sue Black was interviewed by Aleks Krotoski on the Guardian Tech Weekly podcast, Sue Black on the campaign to save Bletchley Park. I mean, I probably heard about it in a high school world history class but that’s about twenty plus years ago.

I developed quite an interest in the restoration project and when I knew I was going to the UK, I decided that I was going to make a plan to visit the Museum. I checked with my cousin who was also interested in coming with me so I got us two return train tickets from Epsom to Bletchley Park. On the day of travel to Bletchley, the train from Epsom to Victoria Station was fine but apparently some idiot decided to jump onto the Victoria Line tube…

View original post 2,155 more words

Decoding the Past at Bletchley Park

Posted by Lara

A Celtic-Dragon's Blog

An Interview with Researcher and Author, Kerry Howard
By J. Lynn Stapleton

In August of 2013, I had the opportunity to visit Bletchley Park. There was so much to see and take in, and yet there was still much to uncover as the park’s restoration continues. Many of the huts which held the Bombe machines were still in poor condition. The Park in itself had been under threat of demolishment more than once, which would have been a great tragedy as it is one of the most historic points in British history, and indeed world history, as the site where the German Enigma code was broken thus ending the War as much as two years earlier and saving millions of lives.

Bletchley Park, also referred to as Station X, was home to the Government Code and…

View original post 1,801 more words