Today Nick, Margaret, and I made a pilgrimage to Bletchley Park. I’ve already blogged about Bletchley, so I’ll just add a few things that weren’t there or I missed this time.

Somewhere deep in the WWII Ministry of War, was there a military sock department? Why only jungle fighters? Didn’t our boys in the desert need something to cushion their feet from army issue boots as well. What about the navy? Your feet can get pretty cold in the North Atlantic, and almost as cold on a ship in the North Atlantic.

Yeah, my feelings exactly.

They currently have an exhibit of illustrations by wartime inmates of Bletchley Park.

This one is about the horrors of night watch in the winter time. The artist, Phyllis Dalton, went on to design costumes for Lawrence of Arabia and The Princess Bride, and she won Oscars for the costumes in Doctor Zhivago and Henry V.

Is that a hot water bottle, or a bottle of gin under her arm? Probably gin.

My favorite illustrations were of the Girls in Hut 4.

This one had the caption censored. There’s a lighter area and missing words, so we don’t know what the top brass were so excited about.

In another hut was a hand drawn Monopoly board, used by Alan Turing and his friends in the 1950s.

The street names are from Cambridge, and the diagonal shortcut across the middle of the board introduces a new element of strategic decision making into the game.

Paula and Margaret have been having great fun adding some new art to Wharram Percy.

Pretty brilliant, I think.