A. J. Alan

Leslie Harrison Lambert (11 November 1883 – 13 December 1941), known in public as A. J. Alan, was an English magician, intelligence officer, short story writer and radio broadcaster.

At the start of World War I, Lambert, a ham radio operator, volunteered to work at a coastguard station in Norfolk which was a centre for intercepting German radio transmissions. By November 1914 he was employed by the Admiralty at Naval Intelligence Room 40, although official records said he had been working at the Foreign Office since 1909. In 1919 the staff at Room 40 became part of the new Government Code and Cypher School.

After the War, Lambert contacted a member of the then British Broadcasting Company to suggest he might tell one of his own short stories on the radio. This was accepted and so, as A. J. Alan, he broadcast My Adventure in Jermyn Street on 31 January 1924. Following his immediate success, he quickly became one of the most popular broadcasting personalities of the time. In the opinion of the critic Kenelm Foss, Alan was the initiator of the "BBC accent". He always wore a dinner jacket when broadcasting. Many of his stories were subsequently printed in newspapers and magazines and were included in anthologies of short stories. Three collections of his stories have been published.

Lambert was still at the GC&CS school at the outbreak of World War II. He was one of the many from GC&CS transferred to Bletchley Park by which time he was an important official in naval military intelligence. He became part of the famous Hut 8 group who worked to break the code of the Nazis' Enigma encryption machine.

His health had begun to decline in 1937. He reduced his radio work and made his last broadcast on 21 March 1940. He continued at Bletchley Park until the year of his death in 1941.