Oliver Strachey

Oliver Strachey CBE (3 November 1874 – 14 May 1960), a British civil servant in the Foreign Office, was a cryptographer from World War I to World War II. Life and work Strachey was a son of Sir Richard Strachey, colonial administrator and Jane Maria Strachey, writer and suffragist, and a brother of the writer Lytton Strachey, the writer Dorothy Bussy and the psychoanalyst and editor of the Standard Edition James Strachey. He was educated at Eton College; he attended Balliol College, Oxford for one term (Hilary 1893). His parents sent him on a tour around the world with Robert Bridges. Then he studied the piano in Vienna under Theodor Leschetizky. While there he attended the funeral of Johannes Brahms in 1897. His playing was of a certain standard, but not up to concert performance, so he returned to England and joined the Foreign Office. His first marriage, in 1900, to Ruby Julia Mayer produced one daughter, Julia Strachey, and ended in divorce. In 1911, he married Ray Costelloe (1887–1940). They had two children, Barbara Strachey (born 1912) and Christopher Strachey (born 1916). Christopher Strachey later became a pioneer in the development of computers and computer languages. Barbara Strachey became a writer.