The Duchess of Cambridge will visit Bletchley Park on 14 May to view a special D-Day exhibit ahead of the 75th anniversary of the landings.
‘D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion’ will be hosted in the newly-renovated Teleprinter Building, which was the location of the codebreakers’ secret work during the Second World War. The codebreakers received hundreds of thousands of enemy messages during their time there.
The exhibit Kate will visit includes an “immersive film, based on newly declassified material, which shows how the intelligence effort coordinated at Bletchley Park helped specifically in the success of the D-Day landings at Normand,” according to Kensington Palace’s press release.
The workers at Bletchley Park were crucial to the success of Allied Forces prior to D-Day. Kensington Palace notes that the workers used “sophisticated codebreaking techniques” to get information to the Allies.
Following the viewing, Kate will meet with the restoration team to discuss the work to the building. She will also meet with schoolchildren who have been learning about the codebreakers through the Bletchley Park Trust. The initiative coincides with the renovation and will teach children about the Second World War by giving them codes to crack.
The children will be “intercepting and deciphering German communications in order to understand their order of battle and decide whether the Operation Fortitude deception plans have been successful,” and will learn about the history behind Bletchley Park while doing so.
Kate previously visited Bletchley Park in 2014. Her grandmother, Valerie Glassborow, worked at the Park alongside her twin sister Mary during the Second World War.
She visited the renovated Park, which had been restored to its Second World War appearance, and toured Hit 6, where the records showed that her grandmother had worked.
Kate spoke of the work her grandmother did at Bletchley Park during that visit, saying that, “I was aware of it when I was a young girl and I often asked granny about it but she was very quiet and never said anything.”
