What's particularly ridiculous about this book is that, just from the blurb and your own review, it's clear that the author did no research at all into code breaking, Churchill, or women's work during WWII. Because women worked all sorts of incredibly dangerous, highly trained jobs, from making bombs on (and even debutantes who had titles took these kinds of jobs) so I find it unlikely that Maggie's gender has disqualified her from being anything but a secretary. In fact a good many women were recruited to work at Bletchley Park on breaking Axis and Soviet codes--more women than men, in fact. Most of the code breakers, especially early in the war, had precisely the kind of background Maggie had, or even less training: not only were people who'd only finished their bachelor's recruited, but women who could "simply" solve cross words quickly!
And Churchill himself was a huge proponent of the code breakers, to the extent of personally visiting the Park and personally marking their request memos "to be done this day". He seems to have felt that cracking the codes swiftly was paramount to the war effort, so I find it unlikely that he'd either A)not recognize Maggie's "quick wits" or B)try to keep her from more useful work.
All that said, I've always heard that the late 40s and 50s were *less* permissive about homosexuality than previously--Turing and several prominent other code breakers were open about their homosexuality. It wasn't talked about usually (so Maggie's experience with matchmaking sounds a bit unlikely) but it also wasn't something men were hounded about. After the war is when the crack down really started.
Have you read Jo Walton's Farthing series? It's an alternate universe (non-fantasy) version of post WWII Britain, in which the Farthing set successfully allied Britain with Hitler's Germany. It's fascinating and masterfully written, though dark, and it might take the bad taste of this book out of your mouth.
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Date: 2013-02-06 08:26 pm (UTC)And Churchill himself was a huge proponent of the code breakers, to the extent of personally visiting the Park and personally marking their request memos "to be done this day". He seems to have felt that cracking the codes swiftly was paramount to the war effort, so I find it unlikely that he'd either A)not recognize Maggie's "quick wits" or B)try to keep her from more useful work.
All that said, I've always heard that the late 40s and 50s were *less* permissive about homosexuality than previously--Turing and several prominent other code breakers were open about their homosexuality. It wasn't talked about usually (so Maggie's experience with matchmaking sounds a bit unlikely) but it also wasn't something men were hounded about. After the war is when the crack down really started.
Have you read Jo Walton's Farthing series? It's an alternate universe (non-fantasy) version of post WWII Britain, in which the Farthing set successfully allied Britain with Hitler's Germany. It's fascinating and masterfully written, though dark, and it might take the bad taste of this book out of your mouth.