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How do you make a musical out of Operation Mincemeat?

Operation Mincemeat has come to the West End
Operation Mincemeat has come to the West End

The British love an eccentric, and nothing can be more eccentric than the story of Operation Mincemeat. The most bizarre ruse of the Second World War, it involved the corpse of a tramp, Glyndwr Michael, being disguised as Captain William Martin, a fake Royal Marine caring correspondence which suggested that the Allies were planning to invade Greece and Sardinia. 

“Martin” was picked up by Spanish fishermen, and their government shared the information with German military intelligence, who subsequently advised that reinforcements be moved from Sicily. And all this the brainchild of none other than Ian Fleming.

You could argue that the Operation Mincemeat musical is an equally eccentric British success story. It has graduated from London’s 80-seat New Diorama Theatre in 2019, through fringe venues Southwark Playhouse and Riverside Studios, to the West End’s Fortune Theatre, where it officially opens this week.

Unlike the rather dour film adaptation in 2021 with Colin Firth and Johnny Flynn, the musical version, created by theatre troupe SpitLip, is a rollicking ride featuring sea shanties, Gilbert and Sullivan-esque patter song and hip-hop Nazis. Crucially, though, it honours the vital work done by this heroic team (including the sacrifice of Michael).

But how do the relatives of the real people involved square such depictions with their loved ones? For Lucy Fleming, it helps bring her closer to her uncle. “He died when I was 17, and he never talked about the war,” she recalls. “I wish to God I had spoken to him about it.”

Ian Fleming in 1964 - Hulton Archive
Ian Fleming in 1964 - Hulton Archive

Lucy was touched and amused by the “tremendous imagination and very dry wit” in the Trout Memo which compares the deception of an enemy in wartime with fly fishing. The Memo was officially written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, director of Naval Intelligence (and later the inspiration for Bond’s boss M), yet bore all the hallmarks of his assistant, Lieutenant Commander Fleming.

It contained 54 ways that “the enemy, like trout, may be fooled or lured”, and Lucy says that he made “wacky suggestions, like dropping footballs painted with luminous paints into the sea near submarines, or disguising tins of explosives as food.” Then there’s number 28, titled “A Suggestion (not a very nice one)”, which became the basis for Mincemeat.

Lucy adores the care taken over the corpse’s “pocket litter” – including love letters from a fiancée, and a missive from Lloyds Bank demanding that the fictitious captain pay his overdraft of £79 19s 2d. “They even placed an eyelash on the supposed letter from Mountbatten, so they could tell if it was opened.” Can Lucy see the Bond legend forming here? “Oh yes – a lot of the things that Ian put in the books were from his wartime experiences.”

John Henry Godfrey was the inspiration for Bond’s M - Alamy
John Henry Godfrey was the inspiration for Bond’s M - Alamy

The man who signed off on Mincemeat – and briefed Winston Churchill – was Colonel John Bevan, head of secret military strategy department the London Controlling Section. His granddaughter, Susie Pugh, remembers a kind man “who was very interested in people. When you spoke to him, you always felt like you were important – which as a child is really, really lovely.” When she later found out about his war efforts, it was “extraordinary to match up the two parts of him.”

The team who carried out the operation included Ewen Montagu. The barrister, who defended accused murderer Alma Rattenbury in her sensational 1935 murder trial, later immortalised in Terence Rattigan’s play Cause Célèbre, had been seconded to navy intelligence. But it wasn’t until she was around 16, says his daughter Jennifer, that he told her about his part in Mincemeat. 

“It was kept secret for a long time. He wanted me to know before his book [The Man Who Never Was] came out [in 1953]. He’d asked to write about it sooner and was turned down [by the Ministry of Defence]. Then [they] begged him to write it, so they could keep an eye on what was actually being published, because there was a journalist nosing around the subject.”

Montagu’s granddaughter (and Jennifer’s niece) Sarah notes that he always considered it a team effort, but he couldn’t name colleagues such as intelligence officer Charles Cholmondeley in the book because he was still involved in intelligence. “And of course he couldn’t put Bletchley Park into it, because that was still under the Official Secrets Act [it remained so until 1974].”

Mincemeat isn’t just a ripping yarn, Sarah observes that it saved lives “on both sides”. She explains: “People on the German side, who were moved, spent time waiting for an invasion that didn’t come.” Jennifer adds: “I have a German friend who told me that my father saved his life, because he was sent from Sicily to Greece.”

Sarah believes Montagu’s legal career was great preparation. “He was very good at grasping all sides of an argument – and one of the key things in counterintelligence is seeing something from the other person’s point of view. He was also enormous fun. He wasn’t just a serious legal beagle.”

That’s what the recent film got so wrong, says Jennifer. “It was utterly humourless, which is the last thing he was. He thought that a sense of humour was a moral duty.” Sarah agrees that the musical nails that tone “much better than the film. It was a very serious business, but there was enjoyment to be had in their creativity and using different schemes to fool the Germans.”

“Even in the actual doing of it, [Montagu] said they nearly crashed the car because they were laughing so much when they were driving the body up to Scotland,” says Jennifer. “They passed a whole load of people queuing to see a spy film and thought: how much more would they enjoy the real story if they could tell them?”

The musical features a troupe of performers playing all sorts of different roles. Jennifer was initially scornful when she learned that Montagu was played by a woman (Natasha Hodgson). Jennifer admits she was initially scornful. “I read a review of it and thought ‘This sounds terrible, how could they do this? A woman playing my father! But not only did I enjoy it, I thought it was a remarkably accurate telling of the story.”

Sarah did wonder if Montagu should be smoking a pipe, however. “Grandpa never went anywhere without his.”

Lucy Fleming is seeing the musical for the first time in the West End. She likes the idea of its comic take: “The great British sense of humour was particularly important in wartime – it helped people keep their spirits up.”

As for Susie, she recalls meeting the cast after her family’s first outing, and her mother hugging Zoë Roberts, who plays Colonel Bevan, and crying “Daddy!”. He would, she believes, have loved this portrayal “because it shows they were humans and doing their best.”

And while Susie has her own distinct memories of Bevan, she has given her children a chance to know him – as well as a younger audience now discovering the story. “When we heard people talking about it in the interval, I went ‘That’s my grandfather!’ I thought my daughter would be horrified, but she was thrilled. I just feel such overwhelming pride.”


Operation Mincemeat is running at the Fortune Theatre May 9-Aug 19; operationmincemeat.com