I’ve just read ‘Beyond Top Secret U’ - Ewen Montagu’s autobiography of his time during WW2 and he is just as chaotic as the musical depicts him.
He refers to Godfrey throughout almost exclusively as 'Uncle John’
He nearly went blind in 1941
Basically calls Bevan’s team useless at their jobs and calls Bevan himself 'unfortunate’ (even funnier knowing they hated each other and Monty wrote a two page long rant about him and why he should be fired)
Asked to be released from the Navy so he could join the German Navy when they refused to promote him because they couldn’t be told about the work he was doing
When he first joined MI5 people got him confused with Ivor who they were already keeping tabs on as he was possibly Soviet spy
He says that he wrote the man who never was in a weekend
He also at one point talks about being given an automatic pistol to wear in a shoulder holster because he rode his bike to work everyday, with top secret documents chained to the basket.
(there are more but these were things that stood out to me when reading the book)
