The Garden Room Girls, BBC Radio 4 broadcasting series

The Garden Room Girls are the women who've seen and heard the innermost secrets of life in No. 10 Downing Street. They've typed and handled key documents and travelled the world with a mobile office; and now they explain what it was like to witness, and be part of, history in the making – and recall the laughter and camaraderie along the way.
An unprecedented series of interviews feature Ann, who took dictation from Winston Churchill while he lay in bed; Linda, who broke the news that John F Kennedy had been shot to Sir Alec Douglas-Home; Tessa, who watched an isolated Margaret Thatcher open letters from well-wishers before she resigned; and Ann-Marie, who accompanied a stunned Tony Blair to New York in the aftermath of 9/11.
In a rare behind-the-scenes visit to No. 10, BBC Radio 4 takes some of the Garden Room Girls back to their old office. Also in the programme, Tony Blair tells listeners about how he relied on the Garden Room Girls to keep his show on the road – whether he was on a holiday beach in Mexico or in a hospital bed after heart surgery. And, when tempers frayed under the pressure, the programme finds out whether office equipment was ever thrown around.
Producer Alicia Trujillo