Helene Aldwinckle

Helene Lovie Taylor was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1920, to Alexander and Helen Taylor (née Trail).[1] Her father was a salesman. She grew up in Footdee, and attended Ashley Road Primary School[2] then Aberdeen Academy, and eventually won a scholarship to study French and English at the University of Aberdeen.[1] Taylor married John Aldwinckle, an RAF flight lieutenant, in February 1945. They had four children: Richard, Linda, Pamela, and Lady Diana Browne. John Aldwinckle died in 2012.[1]

Helene Taylor joined Bletchley Park after completing a three year degree in French and English at Aberdeen University.[3] She was recommended by Aberdeen University Principal William Hamilton Fyfe[4][5] to the Foreign Office, in part because of her extraordinary memory and interest in languages.[1][6] After two rounds of interviews with the Foreign Office in London and Aberdeen, Helene was selected by senior codebreaker Stuart Milner-Barry to become a permanent Foreign Office Civil Servant and was sent to live at Bletchley Park in the summer of 1942.[4][6][7] During the first round of interviews, Aldwinckle was not aware of what she was being interviewed for, believing it to be a general civil service role.[3][5]

Helene was initially based in Registration Room 1 (RR1), where she worked on encrypted signals.[4] She became responsible for leading a training programme for American service personnel in 1943.[4][8][7][5] When the programme was complete, Helene went to work in Quiet Room (QR) in Hut 6, the section of Bletchley Park tasked with deciphering Enigma codes.[4][6][7] There she brought the knowledge and skills she developed training American personnel to longer term and more complicated encryption problems, including identifying Enigma radio networks and radio signals.[4][6][7] After the Second World War ended, Helene stayed for a short time at Bletchley Park to help write the history of the work of Hut 6 but she had to leave the Foreign Office in 1945 due to a policy that said women could not stay employed after marriage.[4][6]

Aldwinckle lived in Cologne and Berlin, accompanying her husband John in his role at MI6, moving initially in the 1950s.[1] She worked for both the British Forces Network and Westdeutscher Rundfunk as a cultural events reporter.[1] She continued her interest in amateur dramatics (having been involved in her youth in Aberdeen)[5] joining the Berlin Amateur Dramatic Society.[1] She accompanied John on subsequent postings to France, Germany and Britain, and they also lived in Rome, Brussels, and Mons.[1]

Aldwinckle had a varied career post-Bletchley, becoming a translator for Thames and Hudson in 1967; and a gallerist at the Medici Gallery at the age of 54.[1] She later worked at the Oxford Gallery, and in 1979 became the manager of the Medici.[1]

Aldwinckle was awarded a Knight in France's Legion of Honour on 19 July 2019 in a ceremony in London's French embassy.[8][6][7] Theresa May thanked her, in May's final Prime Minister's Questions.[1] A blue plaque honouring Helene Aldwinckle was unveiled at 76 Farquhar Road, Dulwich, on 4 September 2022.[9]

• Legion of Honour
• Legion of Honour Museum
• List of Legion of Honour recipients by name (A)
• List of foreign recipients of Legion of Honour by name
• List of foreign recipients of the Legion of Honour by country
• List of foreign recipients of the Legion of Honour by decade
• List of British recipients of the Legion of Honour for the Crimean War