Pamela Rose
Actress and Bletchley Park codebreaker
BORN NOVEMBER 29, 1917 - DIED OCTOBER 17, 2021, AGED 103
PAMELA Rose’s burgeoning acting career was put on hold in 1941 just as she landed a part as understudy for the West End show Water On The Rhine.
Fluent in German and French, she started working at the codebreaking centre, Bletchley Park, in a role as a codebreaker.
In Hut 4 she spent hours translating German messages about ship movements. She found the clerical work boring but enjoyed the company of other women, who took part in amateur dramatics in the evenings. “It was like a university revue, like Footlights,” she said.
She also met Wing Commander Jim Rose, who wooed her over dinner at the Savoy. Through him she met legendary codebreaker Alan Turing.
Susan Pamela Gibson was born during a Zeppelin raid in 1917 at her grandmother’s home in Knightsbridge, west London. Her father Thornley Gibson was a stockbroker, and her mother Elizabeth was a homemaker.
She spurned the life of a debutante to study French in Paris, where she befriended Moulin Rouge singer Yvette Guilbert. In 1938 she studied acting in London and joined a repertory company in Bournemouth.
After the war, she lived in Zurich for 10 years with her husband, who was director of the International Press Institute. Having returned to England, she formed race equality think-tank the Runnymede Trust with Anthony Lester. She taught at a comprehensive school and later became vice-chair of the NSPCC.
In 2002 she played Lady Jedburgh in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan with Vanessa Redgrave at the Theatre Royal, Bath. She quit acting at the age of 90 because of failing eyesight.