The Road to Station X: From Debutante Ball to Fighter-Plane Factory to Bletchley Park: A Memoir of One Woman’s Journey Through World War Two

Written by Sarah Baring

Narrated by Polly Lee

In 1938, Sarah Baring was enjoying life as a young debutante. Only a few years later, at the height of World War Two, she was working alongside some of the greatest minds of Britain in their code-breaking operations at Bletchley Park.



How did she end up in the top-secret world of cyphers and codes?



Like many young men and women across all levels of British society, the outbreak of war in 1939 dramatically altered the course of Sarah's life.



Knowing that she could not stand by while others were enlisting, she left her position in Vogue magazine and signed up to work as a telephonist at an Air Raid Precautions Centre before working in a fighter plane factory to do her bit.



Yet, after just a few months, she was requested to leave the factory behind and was thrust into the world of intelligence, code-breaking, and huge computers, rubbing shoulders with awkward geniuses like Alan Turing.



The Road to Station X provides a window into the life of a young woman that shifted from being a carefree debutante to factory girl to working with code-breakers in Bletchley Park as a result of the turbulent events of World War Two.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jun 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781666135428

Reviews for The Road to Station X

[Sue · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vivid, intelligent and engaging first hand story. Audio version was excellent.

[herenya_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It has taken me a three years to actually get around to reading this short WWII memoir about a debutante who worked at a fighter plane factory and then at Bletchley Park. It’s engaging, and full of details which surprised and/or fascinated me, even though I’ve read at least two books by writers who had definitely read this one (Anne de Courcy refers to Baring’s experiences in her non-fiction book Debs at War, and Kate Quinn based one of her characters in The Rose Code on Baring’s friend Osla).

I enjoyed Baring’s personal anecdotes more than her summaries of the war (although the latter were interesting insofar as it gave insight into what someone with her perspective considered important). I would have happily read more.

The talk had revolved round our girl friends’ activities and they were quick to tell us what glamorous jobs they had. [...] This was getting too much for Osla and I, who could hardly counter with “My dears, the U-boats we sink.” But we had come prepared because, after much thought and previous rehearsal, we had decided to begin with the sentence certain to enthral: “It’s a secret, promise not to tell?” Having captivated our audience and certain to have grabbed their total concentration, we proceeded in dramatic tones and with renewed requests for discretion to explain in detail that we kept files on those who were to receive medals for valour in the field of battle. We managed to talk long enough on the subject to produce looks of glazed boredom on the faces of our interrogators, who begged us not to continue. We had succeeded in gaining a reputation for being extremely prosaic, pitied for doing such a routine job and never questioned again. It appeared that word had gone round that it was a mistake to ask Sarah and Osla about their work because they bored you to tears with their childish enthusiasm.