Letters have been pouring in from ex-members of the ATS saying that their war-time experiences were nothing like what was portrayed as happening to Cathy in Ian McEwan's play The Imitation Game, which was praised in this column last week. My high opinion of the play remains unshaken, but it is only fair to record the outrage of these ladies. After all, they were there.

Some of them were actually at Bletchley Park or else monitoring German broadcasts at one of the subsidiary centres. None of themremembers feeling either excluded from the action or socially despised. Rather the reverse, apparently, in each case. I'm bound to record that what they say rings true. My own instinct, perhaps based on absorbing too many genteel reminiscences, is that the Second World War actually did produce a hitherto unheard of degree of social cohesion among the British people.