大象传媒

This is the wartime story of my mother, Audrey Gertrude Beedle (later Harman) who was born on 29th March 1919. She worked as a cipher officer for the Foreign Office from August 1940, first in Whitehall and then in Cairo and Athens.

She started writing her life story at a class in Lichfield when she was in her late seventies. She has a wonderful and complete series of diaries that she has kept since she was a teenager at school, and though she is blind now she has a lively mind and excellent memory. I enjoy sitting with her and reading her diaries and talking about her life before I was born. She also has many family letters written during the war by her mother, her elder sister Nancy, her younger brothers Frank, and the twins, Maurice and Alec, and herself.

She met my father in Cairo shortly before they both went to Athens to work in the British Embassy there in September 1944, and they were married in Greece in October 1945.

I have divided her story into five sections:

Part 1 Family life, and cypher work at the Foreign Office, London 1939 - September 1943

Part 2 The voyage to Egypt September 1943

Part 3 Life in Cairo September 1943 - October 1944

Part 4 Life in Athens, the Greek Civil War, and VIP visits October 1944 - January 1945

Part 5 Social life in Athens, more VIPS, and VE Day January - May 1945