Warlight

In the novel’s Acknowledgements, Ondaatje shares several resources that informed his historical depiction of civilian espionage. Rose Williams’s role as a signals intelligence agent is based on the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) in Bletchley Park. The estate operated as a center for codebreaking from 1939 to 1946, and mathematician Alan Turing was a notable team member. In the novel, the children learn that The Moth and Rose worked as “firewatchers” on the roof of the Grosvenor House Hotel, a role Nathaniel later realizes involved intercepting coded German signals and broadcasting secret transmissions to Allied forces from the rooftop. At the archives, Nathaniel further learns that Rose sent the German signals to Bletchley Park for decoding. As a child, he saw his mother enter the Wormwood Scrubs prison, not knowing until he was an adult that the site was the secret headquarters for the Radio Security Service, an MI5 network during the war.

The character of Rose may be inspired by renowned wireless operator Yvonne Cormeau, a secret agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) under the code name Annette. Like Rose, Cormeau once parachuted into a foreign country for her work and was a mother who placed her child in the care of a convent during her years as an operative.