Wiles, Maurice Frank, 1923-2005
by Rowan Williams & Frances Young
- Date
- 31 Jan 2017
Extract relating to military intelligence work:
From Tonbridge School, Wiles gained a classical scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge. Pursuing classics, however, was diverted by the demands of war-time. He was recruited into the Army for one day, but actually his war service was spent at Bletchley Park, a fact kept very quiet for a long time: his classics, together with skill in chess and solving crosswords, had recommended him as a recruit to learn Japanese. In 2002 he contributed a paper entitled, ‘Breaking Japanese Military Codes at Bletchley Park’, to a Conference on Bletchley Park held at Christ Church, Oxford. Arriving in Cambridge after the war, he chose to study Moral Sciences rather than classics: Part I Moral Sciences was followed by Part II Theology.
(See: List of humanities scholars who worked in military intelligence in the Second World War)