The deb who sank the Bismarck

A DRAUGHTY wooden hut, in the company of the best brains of Britain, was not quite the billet Jane Fawcett had imagined for herself. At Miss Ironside’s School for Girls in Kensington the drill had been to sit up straight, learn to curtsey and not bother her head about exams, for Mr Right was bound to come along eventually. After that, in 1939, she was a deb, parading en masse in a long white frock and an obvious sulk. A complete waste of time, she thought. Now, aged 19, just a chicken in the Bletchley Park code-breaking team, she was spending hours on a horrid hard chair, bent over a machine on a wobbly trestletable. Lights hung down on strings, and a frightful old stove smoked in the middle of the room. She was also saving the country, and it was terribly exciting. But she could not breathe a word about that.

Jane Fawcett (née Janet Caroline Hughes), codebreaker and saviour of Victorian buildings, died on May 21st, aged 95

Read the full obituary here