While William Leggat was working as an updated energy developer a few summers ago, he received a strange email from a “Operation Mincy” superfan about the strange WWII intelligence plot.
As Shaw outlines, the operation involved British spies adorning bodies as military officers, stuffing them with fake letters hinting at an impending invasion of Sardinia, and discarding the sea corpses and documents discovered by the Nazis.
So the email included a few simple questions. Was William a distant relative of Prime Secretary Hester Legat, who appeared in the musical and played a key role in the plot?
Met on an online forum, superfans of the show known as Mincefluencers, believed Hester was involved in writing fake love letters that staff had planted in their bodies to help them believe the plot. But William Leggatt didn't know what the email was talking about.
Only when he began talking to his family, who were approaching the great path, when he later read the documents sent by Minchu Fulencer, he realized they were right. Ultimately, he recalled in a recent interview that the musical “opened up the whole thing to my family that I didn't know about.”
Since its London debut in 2019, “Operation Mincemeat,” which opened on Broadway at Golden Theatre last week, has earned praise for turning wartime espionage into a satirical musical. For William Leggatt and other descendants of real-life figures portrayed on the stage, it also unearthed the secrets of the family and brought new appreciation to their ancestors.
The musical portrays Hester Leggat (one of five cast members who perform numerous parts) as a non-emotional disrespectful of writing a love letter and singing a heartbreaking shortper called “Dear Bill.”
World War II enthusiasts knew that since journalist Ben McIntier named her in 2010 history, a secretary called Hester could have written romantic notes. However, the slightest contradiction in the spelling of her last name meant that when the musical was opened, the real Hester remained primarily a mystery.
Once the Mincefluencers discovered the correct spelling, they set out to find the descendants of Hester Leggatt, and eventually created a 50-page document about her life. Superfan also got the UK's domestic security agency MI5, and confirmed that Hester Legat had been working for services during the war.
William Leggat said he had never met the great path that passed away in 1995 and had no idea about the background before receiving the email.
He added that he was “quite annoying” to learn that she played a role in the famous World War II plot decades after her death. Still, he said: “I don't think she even said anyone close to her. She kept it a secret for her life.”
For other offspring of the operational Mincemeat Spies, the musical has delved into the family history more and changed the perception of long-lost relatives.
Susie Pugh, the granddaughter of John Bevan, an official who approved the plot, said attending the musical concluded the image of the man who passed away when she was 15 years old.
Jessica Bardrian, the granddaughter of another spy, Charles Cholmondry, said her family chatted about him regularly after watching the show. She said she had some wrong things, including portraying him as a newt-obsessed nerd (the family couldn't find evidence of his amphibian fantasy). But she added that it was a musical: “You don't think it was accurate.” Like many of the spy's descendants, Baldrian traveled from England for the recent Broadway opening and saw his grandfather portrayed on a New York stage.
One descendant even became Mincefluencer himself.
Saul Montague said he had known for a long time that great grandfather Aewen Montague had masterminded his operation, not only because he wrote about a book called “The Man Who Never Was That.” The walls of the family home in Oxford also include numerous photographs, paintings and Montague caricatures.
However, Saul Montague said as a teenager he had little thought about his great grandfather, who died in 1985.
That changed in January 2020 after the family went out to watch the musical. He began delving into the life of his great grandfather, first reading his book, then reading his unpublished autobiography and his year's handwritten diary at Harvard.
As Saul Montague's musical fandom grew, he recalled, joining the main online Mincefluencers group and answering questions about his great grandfather.
The study said it “humanized” his great grandfather and made him more than just a cool story to tell his friends. Now he's been watching musicals 13 times and joked with actor Natasha Hodgson, who plays his ancestors, about how they are “family”.
In the interview, six descendants of the characters said they loved the show, but they weren't convinced that their ancestors would agree.
William Leggatt said of his great Aunt Hester, “I'm sure she was happy with it because her contributions would ultimately be recognized.” But if she discovered that a man portrayed her on Broadway, he said, “it would have been some splatters.”
