RESEARCHER & writer

Jude is a best-selling published author of the memoir of Pippa Latour, a WW II secret agent.

The Last Secret Agent is the astounding true story of one of the last female special operations agents in France to get out alive after its liberation in WWII. Born in 1921, Pippa Latour became a covert special operations agent who parachuted into a field in Nazi-occupied Normandy. Trained by the British, Pippa was lauded for her fluency with languages and her coding ability - attributes she put to remarkable use when she posed as a teenage soap-seller, often selling her wares to the German soldiers and sending back information via code to England.

Incredibly brave - Pippa knew she could be instantly shot if her cover was blown - she concealed her codes on a piece of silk that she threaded through a shoelace and wore as a hair tie. She bicycled around the region, often sleeping rough and foraging for food. During her time in Normandy, Pippa sent 135 secret messages conveying crucial information on German troop positions in the lead-up to D-Day.

For decades, Pippa told no one - not even her family - of her incredible feats during WWII. In 2023, Jude Dobson was contracted by Allen & Unwin to write the memoir of Phyllis Latour Doyle, better known as Pippa. At the then age of 101, Pippa had never spoken at length about her time as a covert special operations agent in Nazi-occupied Normandy, during the last months of World War II. Knowing she may not have much longer to live, Pippa told Jude that she was finally ready to tell her story and that she wanted Jude to be the one to tell it.

OTHER WRITING

Jude end to end produces commercial and editorial content - for which research, writing and editing the written word is the basis. She has also written as a hired writer for various publications and platforms over the years - be it for her own weekly column, travel pieces, one off subject writes, or commercial writing for electronic digital messaging. She has also run a writing team of academic and commercial writers, producing written content for a multinational company interested in child development.

Being a former registered nurse, Jude values research and knowledge as the basis of any understanding. Approaching things from an inquiring position, and seeking expertise to understand context, she enjoys taking complex knowledge and distilling them down to understandable messages.

With her love of travel, she has regularly been published writing about her travels and experiences over the years. You'll find some examples here from France, another from Sardinia here and Dubai here. Jude has travelled to France on more than one occasion driven by her interest in New Zealanders on The Western Front in WW1. She started by researching and having writing published about the men who never came back from Passchendaele, as well as those who survived the hellish existence of war, like her grandfather.

Jude’s interest in World War One has produced ‘The Liberation of Le Quesnoy’. This is a six episode filmed documentary series for the Herald (2018) with associated audio podcasts she researched, wrote and produced, as well as supplying written pieces. The full length doco for Maori TV (ANZAC Day 2020) was an involved research and writing task. Working with the President of the New Zealand Military Historical Society, Jude distilled hours of interview content to write the content correctly, yet engagingly using human stories, to make history come to life for the reader /listener/ viewer.

Researching and writing about the handful of remaining WW 2 aircrew in New Zealand was also a privilege. In their late nineties and early hundreds, Jude interviewed these men, often learning at the end of the interview that they had told her stories they had not even shared with their family members.

Going back in time, for a few years in the 1990s Jude had the problem page “Dear Jude” in the New Zealand Women’s Weekly. She answered reader’s letters on their love life, their family, their career, whatever was on their mind. She used a mixture of solid research and her own experience and knowledge, and delivered it with a touch of humour if appropriate to lighten the message. It’s a job that was revived in 2019 with a new name “Hey Jude”, which appeared every week in the NZWW until the magazine’s untimely demise in 2020 due to the CoVID 19 economic downturn.

Jude also had another weekly column in The Aucklander (part of The Herald) called “Family Matters”. For six years every week from 2006 to 2011 she wrote on whatever inspired, annoyed or amused her. Often based round issues of the day, and/or reflections on a busy family life with three children, columns were a mix of amusing, solemn, thought provoking and anything in between.

Jude is currently writing a weekly column for Summerset Retirement Villages. She has also enjoyed researching and writing material for MC’ing, event hosting, and speeches over the years for many and varied organisations.  

Filmed content she has produced has also needs research when creating the narrative and finding the message needing to be expressed.  Associated written text needs to have a similar tone, manner and intent.

Taking an idea and expressing it in a written form so it feels understandable and relatable to the reader is something Jude really enjoys doing. This discipline of communication is the same, be it for report or proposal writing, pulling together background research, or writing for publication. She also blogged regularly in the past for Family Health Diary on family and health and anything in between.

Jude has overseen the writing of parenting tips in the briefest form (sub 140 characters)in the way of push notifications for the Raising Children app, and the content of the associated website.

She has also run an academic writing contract centered around child health and development content, producing a series of scientific literature reviews from medical writers, approved by an academic board. There was also the need for the ‘consumer’ version of the write in a more understandable form, for the public, and the social media posts.

Jude has also started working part time towards a Postgraduate Certificate in Public Health, so is doing some academic writing as well. Another sort of writing altogether!