Research Journey
“I am often asked how the journey started in telling the history of the clandestine eavesdropping programme of WWII that involved the secret listeners…” Dr Helen Fry
“In early 2004 former secret listener Fritz Lustig said to me that no one had told the story of his wartime unit. He pointed out that I had told many stories about the 10,000 Germans who fought for Britain, but what about the secret listeners?”
Fritz said: “I spent 3 years in the Buckinghamshire countryside at a place called Latimer House, I signed the Official Secrets Act. Did we do anything that made any difference to the war? We were never told.”
“I promised Fritz that I would research it and write the book as the files had just then been declassified. No one quite expected the 20-year journey of extraordinary discovery of the intelligence operation that shortened the war alongside Bletchley Park. Years of painstaking research, giving talks in which veterans or their families came out of the woodwork, enabled the full and only published story of the secret listeners to be told.
It led to a number of TV appearances in documentaries and on the BBC, as well as for the schools forum London Grid for Learning. Fritz’s last public interview was with Sir David Jason in the grounds of Trent Park (Cockfosters, North London) in 2017 for the TV series David Jason’s Secret Service.
Historian and author Dr Helen Fry is the foremost authority on the secret listeners who worked at special eavesdropping sites operated by British intelligence during WWII. Her ground-breaking research and extensive media coverage nationally and internationally have shed light on one of the greatest intelligence deceptions of the war.
She has collaborated with London Grid for Learning to create a school curriculum module on this topic: https://t.co/0s3LQYOIbK
