Secret WW2 codebreaker became passionate speaker

A Bletchley Park codebreaker, who died this week, became a passionate speaker about her secret work to help future generations understand what happened, a historian who knew her has said.

Charlotte "Betty" Webb deciphered enemy messages during World War Two, and her work remained a secret until 1975.

Sandra Taylor, from the Friends of Mercian Regiment Museum in Worcestershire, described her as one of those "indomitable" people from World War Two, who got on with the job for the sake of future generations.

The decorated codebreaker died this week at the age of 101.

Ms Taylor remembered how she booked her for one talk but had to hire a bigger a hall, because so many people wanted to hear "this inspirational woman".

"Her memory was superb. Her sense of humour was great."

She said Mrs Webb had always stressed how she had been unable to talk about what she had done for many years.

"When her parents died, they never knew what her role had been and that was something she regretted," Ms Taylor said.

But she said when Mrs Webb could finally talk about her work, she brought it alive in a way historians could not.

"She was there, she could describe in detail down to the dances she went to, the men that she met - outside of work she had a life as well."

Mrs Webb did not just talk about codebreaking, she brought to life experiences from the war that people could only now read about in books, she said.

"The questions she got could have gone on forever. We only had the hall for so long."

She said at another event at Hartlebury Castle, people "couldn't get enough of her", adding: "Loads of people came on that day for Betty. There was another veteran there but she was the draw. People just loved talking to her."

Mrs Webb, from Wythall in Worcestershire, was among the last surviving Bletchley codebreakers.

She joined operations at the Buckinghamshire base aged 18, later going on to help with Japanese codes at The Pentagon in the US.

She was awarded France's highest honour - the Légion d'Honneur - in 2021.

Mrs Webb told the BBC in 2023 how, years after her work at Bletchley Park, she put the picture together of what had taken place there.

"We were not allowed to talk to anybody outside our own office and that meant at the time I had no idea what was going on in the rest of Bletchley," she said.

"It's only in later years when people have written about it, and met up with others who served there, that I've been able to put the picture together.

"For this day and age that sounds extraordinary," she said, "But that was how it had to be."

She said: "There would have been a handful of senior people who would be in the know about everything and would have been in touch with Churchill and other high-ranking people."

Iain Standen, chief executive of Bletchley Park, said Mrs Webb was one of a team of about 9,000 people and was "very humble about what she did".

"She was so passionate about telling the story, because they kept it secret," he said.

"She wanted to make sure that everybody down the generations knew."

He said Bletchley Park workers lived under rationing, with many constraints on their lives, carrying out important work in "rudimentary conditions".

"If you come and look at the huts in Bletchley park, they are glorified garden sheds which they were working in - with very, very little heating and no air conditioning, and of course they didn't have PCs," he said.

"They were working with typewriters and pen and pencils - so very rudimentary conditions doing absolutely extraordinary work."

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