Kate Middleton’s Grandmother Was A WWII Codebreaker

Kate Middleton became Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, when she married the British Royal Family’s Prince William in 2011. Her husband is second in line for the British Throne, after his father Prince Charles.

But Kate didn’t need to marry to get a family with a colorful history.  She already had the one that she was born into, as she tells in the introduction which she has recently written for a new book.

The book is the United Kingdom’s Signals and Intelligence and Cyber Security agency’s first-ever puzzle book.  The book is intended to challenge readers and to honor people who have worked to crack the code. Kate has written the forward to the book. She speaks about her grandmother, who worked as a codebreaker during WW2.

The proceeds from the sales will benefit Heads Together, a non-profit organization that seeks to raise awareness of mental health issues.  She works on the campaign with her husband and his brother, the magazine Marie Claire reported.

In the forward, she writes: “I have always been immensely proud of my grandmother, Valerie Glassborow, who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.  She and her twin sister, Mary, served with thousands of other young women as part of the great Allied effort to break enemy codes.  They hardly ever talked about their wartime service, but we now know just how important the men and women of Bletchley Park were, as they tackled some of the hardest problems facing the country.”

Ian Harvey

Ian Harvey is one of the authors writing for WAR HISTORY ONLINE