Mar 27, 2022
Charlie and Kate Quinn (The Rose Code; The Diamond Eye) discuss the extraordinary people behind Bletchley Park's successes, including socialite Osla Benning, and her relationship with Elizabeth II's future husband, Prince Philip. And, in a nod to her latest novel, Kate introduces us to Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a WWII Soviet sniper from Kyiv.
Please note there is a swear word in this episode.
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Osla Benning
Lord Mountbatten
Mavis Lever
Dilly Knox
Battle of Cape Matapan
Mavis Lever's biography of Dilly Knox
John Cairncross
The Cambridge Five
Coventry Blitz
Lyudmila Pavlichenko
You can contact the show at books@carnelianvalley.com
Question Index
00:34 Tell us about your degrees in Classical Voice
02:55 How did you come to choose how to write The Rose Code, whose stories to tell?
04:59 Could you tell us more about Osla - who she was factually, and in the context of your novel?
08:01 Were you daunted at all, using Prince Philip as a character?
11:17 Could you tell us about Mavis Lever (a person who worked at Bletchley who made up a portion of Quinn's character, Beth)?
13:52 You've said before that Bletchley was quite diverse. Could you expand on this?
15:47 You've used references to Alice In Wonderland as metaphors - why?
17:11 Did many people suffer from mental illness due to their work?
20:10 How vital were Beth's awful parents to you in terms of her character development?
23:01 The second narrative set in the 'current' day - why include this new code-breaking and traitors?
26:16 How important was it for the traitor to be easy to work out?
27:48 You have a second, fictional, aid raid happening in Coventry. Can you tell us about the facts of the real one and the decisions made?
31:47 Should the reader's opinion of Beth have changed during this section?
35:08 [Reading]
39:55 How was Lyudmila recruited?
Purchase Links
The Rose Code:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Waterstones
Hive
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Indigo Chapters
The Diamond Eye:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Amazon Canada
Waterstones
Hive
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound
Indigo Chapters
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Photograph used with the permission of the author.