The True Story of Operation Mincemeat

✎𓂃 All about MI5, double agents spying for Britain and how a dead body became the bait in a crucial moment that changed the course of WWII

Operation Mincemeat is the Olivier Award-winning Best New Musical, in position in London and on Broadway with a World Tour on the move. With 189 five-star reviews and a Tony Award to boot, it’s the best-reviewed show in West End history, and now, the mission is landing in Toronto! But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. The year is 1943, and right now we’re losing the war. Luckily, we’re about to gamble all our futures on a stolen corpse.

Singin’ in the Rain meets Strangers on a Train, Operation Mincemeat is the fast-paced, hilarious and unbelievable true story of the twisted secret mission that won us World War II. Bursting at the seams with the kind of chaos you couldn’t invent, the question is: how did a dead body, a fake love letter, and James Bond creator Ian Fleming come together to wrong-foot Hitler?

MEET THE REAL MI5

What were they up to?

Espionage played a key role in WWII, used by Allied and Axis powers alike to gain military advantage, gather secrets, learn about surprise attacks, and deceive the enemy. During the war, Britain became one of the leading players in global espionage.

The Twenty Committee

MI5 established the Twenty Committee to manage the numerous double-agents spying for Britain during WWII – Nazi spies who had been captured and fed false information to deliver to their commanders. The Committee’s name came from the number 20 in Roman numerals: XX, a double cross. As the war progressed and MI5’s deception strategies broadened, the Committee developed numerous successful schemes to mount military operations in Europe.

The Trout Memo

Deception was a lot like fly-fishing, according to Admiral John Henry Godfrey, who penned the Trout Memo: a list of 54 suggestions for deceiving the enemy, co-written with his assistant Fleming… Ian Fleming.

The 28th suggestion was headed ‘not a very nice one’. It proposed a dead body, carrying fake military plans, planted as ‘bait’ in German waters. In 1943, a team within MI5 decided to put this plan into action.

EWEN MONTAGU

CHARLES CHOLMONDELEY

JOHN BEVAN

JEAN LESLIE

HESTER LEGGATT

GLYNDWR MICHAEL

FINDING HESTER

EWEN MONTAGU

Trained as a barrister, yachtsman, and WWI machine gun instructor, Montagu was fast-tracked into Naval Intelligence when WWII began. As the naval representative on the Twenty Committee, he co-devised Operation Mincemeat with Cholmondeley, and presented it to John Bevan.

CHARLES CHOLMONDELEY

Cholmondeley began WWII as a flight lieutenant but never flew on account of poor eyesight. He was appointed to MI5’s Twenty Committee, at this point a small unit dedicated to managing double agents. Here, he devised Operation Mincemeat: a body carrying documents detailing an allied invasion of Sardinia would be recovered by the Germans, who would consolidate their forces far away from the Allies’ true target of Sicily.

JOHN BEVAN

Bevan had acquired a taste for the art of deception while serving as an officer in the First World War. He climbed the ranks fast; by 1943 he had a seat on the Twenty Committee and was the head of the London Controlling Section, which planned and co-ordinated deception operations. Bevan pitched Operation Mincemeat to Churchill, who gave it his approval.

JEAN LESLIE

Jean was a 19-year-old clerk at MI5 when the Operation Mincemeat was approved. As the false documents needed to look as plausible as possible, a fictitious Marine Officer, ‘Major William Martin’, was invented. Jean was recruited by Montagu to stand in as a suitable ‘fiancée’ in a photograph that Major Martin would carry in his wallet.

HESTER LEGGATT

A senior secretary at MI5, Hester Leggatt worked with Leslie to craft the persona of Major Martin. Leggatt was responsible for writing believable letters from ‘Pam’, Major Martin’s fiancée, to aid in the authenticity of the scheme.

GLYNDWR MICHAEL

Glyndwr Michael was a homeless Welshman who had moved to London during the Great Depression. His death, caused by consuming rat poison, was ruled a suicide – but historian Ben Macintyre (author of the book Operation Mincemeat), theorised that Michael had accidentally eaten bread laced with rat poison.

After MI5 discreetly contacted the coroner, Michael’s body was given the invented persona of William Martin. The personal artefacts carefully crafted by the team were placed into his pockets; when his body was found by the Germans, they discovered restaurant receipts, letters from a fiancée, and top-secret military plans.

‘Major William Martin’ was buried in Huelva, Spain, with full military honours. When his true identity was uncovered in 1996, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission added Glyndwr Michael’s real name to the gravestone.

FINDING HESTER

Fans of the musical helped uncover more details about the elusive Hester Leggatt, who was missing from official records. After they deduced that historical sources misspelt her name as Leggett, MI5 released documents confirming her identity, and her life after the war came to light. The fans found Hester’s great-great-niece Freya Leggatt, who hadn’t known about Hester or her contribution to the mission’s success.

In 2023, a plaque commemorating Hester Leggatt was installed at the Fortune Theatre in London, where the show has played since March 2023.