Irene Jessie "Mouse" Brown (née Young; 16 February 1919 – 7 June 2017) was an author and codebreaker who worked at

Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buckinghamshire) that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years followin ...

in Buckinghamshire in

Hut 6 Hut 6 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, Britain, tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine cyphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma. ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. She was employed as a linguist and translator working in the Registration Room and the main Decoding Room.

Early life

Irene Young grew up and attended school in Edinburgh (St. Margaret's Convent School, Canaan Park School and Esdaile College). She was interested in French, English literature and Latin. At

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

she read English Language and Literature.

Bletchley Park

She began working at Bletchley Park in the Government Code and Cypher School in 1942. Brown wrote a book (in her maiden name) about her time at Bletchley, ''Enigma Variations: a Memoir of Love and War''. Published in 1990, it was one of the first books to describe what life was like at Bletchley. Women formed roughly 75% of the workforce at Bletchley Park. The book tells of her time in Hut 6, everyday life at “Station X”, her wartime experiences in general and the tragic death of her first husband (Leslie Cairn). Irene and Leslie both worked in confidential roles. He in the Special Air Service (SAS), she as a codebreaker. Neither could tell the other much about what they were doing. In 1944, he became missing in action in occupied France.

Later life

She married Reginald Sydney Brown in 1948. They returned to Edinburgh and she worked in a departmental library at Edinburgh University. Her papers and correspondence are held there. She lived much of her life in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

and died in 2017 at the age of 98.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Irene 1919 births 2017 deaths Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Bletchley Park people Bletchley Park women British cryptographers