Baltic Countdown

Winifred Margaret "Peggie" Pollock Benton was born in 1906 in Malta, where her father was serving as a military doctor and her mother, as a nurse. She married Kenneth Benton, an English teacher, in Vienna in 1938 at the outbreak of World War II. Kenneth was recruited into MI6; the couple's epic wartime exploits are recounted in Peggie's book, Baltic Countdown. Their work during the war included contributions to the Bletchley Park decoding project and intelligence gathering for the "Double Cross" plan, which successfully misled the Germans about the location of the D-Day landings. After the war, Peggie translated and authored cookbooks. She also completed and published books started by family members, including Peterman and One Man Against the Drylands. Peggie was working on a sequel, Drylands Bear Fruit, just before her death.