Guest Blog: 'I Couldn't Let the Matter Go': Erin Edwards on OPERATION MINCEMEAT, MI5 and the Campaign to #FindHester

Operation Mincemeat has amassed a legion of loyal followers during its short life, many of whom have been inspired to find out more about the characters portrayed on stage.

In 1943, MI5 secretary Hester Leggatt played a vital role in an operation to fool the Nazis, by writing fake love letters to be found on a corpse. Hester's own story remained a mystery until Operation Mincemeat inspired fans, known as mincefluencers, to #FindHester.

A dedicated fan base began scouring the National Archives at Kew and the Imperial War Museum, conducting open-source investigations and attempting to locate potential relatives. Erin Edwards wrote to MI5, asking for confirmation that Hester had worked in the wartime security services. Here she tells BroadwayWorld about her own research and  eventually receiving written confirmation from MI5 about Hester.

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Everyone I’ve ever introduced to Operation Mincemeat has the same question at the end: how much of that is true? The true tale is mad enough that disbelief is understandable, and I had the same question when I first saw the show at the Southwark Playhouse in 2020. The archivist in me couldn’t let the matter go unanswered and I immediately started researching, first using books and documentaries and then using genealogy records to fill in the remaining holes.

Most of the mainstream historical research into the real operation is at least a decade old, predating huge advances in the digitisation of primary sources. We now have easy access to documents that were once buried in record offices, and those records showed one thing: Hester Leggett, the spinster MI5 secretary, didn’t exist. She’s a character in the show but she’s also mentioned in historian Ben Macintyre’s book on the mission, where she’s referenced by Jean Leslie, another MI5 secretary Macintyre interviewed before her death in 2012.

It was clear there was a real person behind Hester Leggett, but there was no one by that name in the U.K. at the time. Names are frequently misspelt in historical documents, so I started looking at alternative spellings. I ended up with a short list of potential Hesters, one of whom was Hester May Murray Leggatt, but I didn’t have the time or the resources to research each one and find the right Hester. So I put the list down for three years, knowing I needed to one day answer the question.

Three years later, I saw a tweet from someone else who had discovered the same error. By mid-2023 Operation Mincemeat had made it to the West End and amassed a dedicated group of fans. When presented with the task of finding Hester, their pooling of time and resources overcame the hurdles that had previously held me back. The ‘Mincefluencers’ were dedicated to locating as much information as possible on Hester and drew on experience from their careers and hobbies to follow every possible avenue of information.

It quickly became clear that Hester May Murray Leggatt was the most encouraging candidate. Mincefluencers traced her from India, born to British parents, and through her years at Wycombe Abbey school. They found her piano exam results in newspapers and unearthed samples of her handwriting from letters written during her secretarial career. That handwriting seemed to match the letters she reportedly wrote for use in Operation Mincemeat.

After countless hours researching online and in archives, we had a full picture of Hester Leggatt’s life, with one crucial piece missing. There was no confirmation of her time at MI5. By this point we’d contacted her closest living family (her brothers’ grandchildren, as she never had any children of her own) and they knew nothing of her time at MI5, but many who worked for the secret service take the secret to their graves.

The information is kept by MI5 itself and it will only share it if the individual is dead and concluded their work over 50 years ago. Hester fit the criteria, but there was no guarantee of a reply. I wrote to them anyway, not willing to leave the stone unturned. After sending off Hester’s death certificate and requesting any information they might hold, I all but forgot about it. MI5 understandably have more important things to do.

The eventual reply couldn’t have come at a better time. In August this year, more than 70 Mincefluencers, many of whom had been involved in the #FindingHester journey, had assembled at the Fortune Theatre in costume to see the show in a night dubbed ‘Operation Interesting Man’.

When the curtain came down, I turned on my phone and was greeted with the news that a letter had arrived from MI5. Hester May Murray Leggatt had indeed worked for them from June 1940 to July 1945.

Announcing the news to an auditorium full of fans finally provided the answer to a question I’d first asked in 2020 and that dozens of other people had asked since.

We’d found Hester.

Read our interview with Jak Malone on playing Hester Leggett in the show here.

Operation Mincemeat is currently running at the Fortune Theatre

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