100 People You Never Knew Were at Bletchley Park
100 People You Never Knew Were at Bletchley Park

Author: Sinclair McKay

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781838405120

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"The reason for the huge commercial success of Sinclair McKay's The Secret Life of Bletchley Park was simple: for the first time it told the stories of the ordinary people (mostly women), who worked there, and what it was like. Sworn to secrecy, they never divulged their remarkable wartime service for decades. But what did they go on to achieve after the war? And what about those who did become household names, but whose Bletchley Park years remain unknown? Now Sinclair McKay tells the stories of a hundred such people, and the often equally extraordinary lives they went on to. Here are dozens of unsung heroes, who certainly made their mark after the war as well as during its finest hour: people like Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, or novelist Angus Wilson; or Jane Fawcett, a trained ballerina who went on to co-found the Victorian Society and save St Pancras Station; or James Bernard, a protege of Benjamin Britten who wrote all the music for the Dracula films; or Joan Clarke, Alan Turing's girlfriend, who became a senior codebreaker herself at GCHQ"--Publisher's description.

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park

Author: Sinclair McKay

Publisher: Aurum

Published: 2011-08-26

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1845136837

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Bletchley Park was where one of the war’s most famous – and crucial – achievements was made: the cracking of Germany’s “Enigma” code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside was home to Britain’s most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology – indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. But, though plenty has been written about the boffins, and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction – from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges’ biography of Turing – what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? What was life like for them – an odd, secret territory between the civilian and the military? Sinclair McKay’s book is the first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, and an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties – of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in) – of a youthful Roy Jenkins, useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels – and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other’s work.

Bletchley Park Brainteasers
Bletchley Park Brainteasers

Author: Sinclair McKay

Publisher: Quercus

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1635061199

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WOULD BLETCHLEY PARK--THE TOP-SECRET HOME OF BRITISH WORLD WAR II CODEBREAKERS--HAVE RECRUITED YOU? PUT YOUR MENTAL AGILITY TO THE TEST WITH THESE FIENDISHLY CHALLENGING PUZZLES AND FIND OUT. Have a knack for mastering Morse code? Want to discover whether your crossword hobby might have seen you recruited into the history books? Think you could have contributed to the effort to crack the Nazis' infamous Enigma code? Then this book about Bletchley Park was custom-made for you. When scouring the population for codebreakers, Bletchley Park recruiters left no stone unturned. They devised various ingenious mind-twisters to assess the puzzle-solving capacity of these individuals--hidden codes, cryptic crosswords, secret languages, and complex riddles. These puzzles, together with the fascinating recruitment stories that surround them, are contained in this book, endorsed by Bletchley Park itself. Though they had diverse backgrounds, the codebreakers of Bletchley Park were united in their love of a good puzzle. If you are of the same persuasion, put your intelligence to the test with the mind-boggling puzzles on these pages and ask yourself: Would Bletchley Park have recruited YOU?

Codebreaker Girls
Codebreaker Girls

Author: Jan Slimming

Publisher: Casemate Publishers

Published: 2021-03-03

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 1526784122

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“What would it be like to keep a secret for fifty years? Never telling your parents, your children, or even your husband?” Codebreaker Girls: A Secret Life at Bletchley Park tells the true story of Daisy Lawrence. Following extensive research, the author uses snippets of information, unpublished photographs and her own recollections to describe scenes from her mother’s poor, but happy, upbringing in London, and the disruptions caused by the outbreak of the Second World War to a young woman in the prime of her life. The author asks why, and how, Daisy was chosen to work at the Government war station, as well as the clandestine operation she experienced with others, deep in the British countryside, during a time when the effects of the war were felt by everyone. In addition, the author examines her mother’s personal emotions and relationships as she searches for her young fiancée, who was missing in action overseas. The three years at Bletchley Park were Daisy’s university, but having closed the door in 1945 on her hidden role of national importance — dealing with Germany, Italy and Japan — this significant period in her life was camouflaged for decades in the filing cabinet of her mind. Now her story comes alive with descriptions, original letters, documents, newspaper cuttings and unique photographs, together with a rare and powerful account of what happened to her after the war. “Here’s a beauty of a history of some of the codebreaking girls who helped save us during the second world war. This one’s about Daisy Lawrence’s extraordinary life as a poor girl brought up in London and then chosen for top secret work at Bletchley Park. Reads like fiction.” —Books Monthly

WW2 Codebreaking People and Places
WW2 Codebreaking People and Places

Author: Ronald Koorm

Publisher: Pen and Sword Military

Published: 2024-09-30

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 1399053531

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WW2 Codebreaking People and Places is the first volume of a series on a glossary of codebreaking, ‘People and Places’, brings to the reader an easily understandable account and listing, of those involved in collecting and analysing military intelligence, principally during the second world war. while some will be well known, such as Alan Turing, many others have made significant contributions to codebreaking but fail to attract the attention of the media for the most part. From an individual named ‘Wren’ who worked at a codebreaking outstation supporting Bletchley Park, to a mathematician who modified a codebreaking machine just prior to D-Day, to a ladies foundationwear factory in Hertfordshire that helped make machine components, these people and places now can be appreciated as to where they fitted-in within the overall picture of gathering, and processing enemy intelligence in wartime. The entries are cross-referenced to enable the reader to research as much or as little as they want, to dip-in to the glossary, to use it as a basis for further study, or just to learn a little more about the people that helped us win the war with our allied friends. .

Codebreakers
Codebreakers

Author: Francis Harry Hinsley

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780192801326

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The story of Bletchley Park, the successful intelligence operation that cracked Germany's Enigma Code. Photos.

Lorenz
Lorenz

Author: Jerry Roberts

Publisher: The History Press

Published: 2017-03-02

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 0750982047

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The breaking of the Enigma machine is one of the most heroic stories of the Second World War and highlights the crucial work of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park, which prevented Britain's certain defeat in 1941. But there was another German cipher machine, used by Hitler himself to convey messages to his top generals in the field. A machine more complex and secure than Enigma. A machine that could never be broken. For sixty years, no one knew about Lorenz or 'Tunny', or the determined group of men who finally broke the code and thus changed the course of the war. Many of them went to their deaths without anyone knowing of their achievements. Here, for the first time, senior codebreaker Captain Jerry Roberts tells the complete story of this extraordinary feat of intellect and of his struggle to get his wartime colleagues the recognition they deserve. The work carried out at Bletchley Park during the war to partially automate the process of breaking Lorenz, which had previously been done entirely by hand, was groundbreaking and is recognised as having kick-started the modern computer age.

The Bletchley Girls
The Bletchley Girls

Author: Tessa Dunlop

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Published: 2015-01-08

Total Pages: 525

ISBN-13: 1444795732

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'Lively...in giving us the daily details of their lives in the women's own voices Dunlop does them and us a fine service' New Statesman 'Dunlop is engaging in her personal approach. Her obvious feminine empathy with the venerable ladies she spoke to gives her book an immediacy and intimacy.' Daily Mail 'An in-depth picture of life in Britain's wartime intelligence centre...The result is fascinating, and is made all the more touching by the developing friendships between Dunlop and her interviewees.' Financial Times The Bletchley Girls weaves together the lives of fifteen women who were all selected to work in Britain's most secret organisation - Bletchley Park. It is their story, told in their voices; Tessa met and talked to 15 veterans, often visiting them several times. Firm friendships were made as their epic journey unfolded on paper. The scale of female involvement in Britain during the Second World War wasn't matched in any other country. From 8 million working women just over 7000 were hand-picked to work at Bletchley Park and its outstations. There had always been girls at the Park but soon they outnumbered the men three to one. A refugee from Belgium, a Scottish debutante, a Jewish 14-year-old, and a factory worker from Northamptonshire - the Bletchley Girls confound stereotypes. But they all have one common bond, the war and their highly confidential part in it. In the middle of the night, hunched over meaningless pieces of paper, tending mind-blowing machines, sitting listening for hours on end, theirs was invariably confusing, monotonous and meticulous work, about which they could not breathe a word. By meeting and talking to these fascinating female secret-keepers who are still alive today, Tessa Dunlop captures their extraordinary journeys into an adult world of war, secrecy, love and loss. Through the voices of the women themselves, this is a portrait of life at Bletchley Park beyond the celebrated code-breakers, it's the story of the girls behind Britain's ability to consistently out-smart the enemy, and an insight into the women they have become.

The Secret Listeners
The Secret Listeners

Author: Sinclair McKay

Publisher: Aurum

Published: 2012-10-04

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1781310904

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Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret… The men and women of the ‘Y’ (for Wireless’) Service were sent out across the world to run listening stations from Gibraltar to Cairo, intercepting the German military’s encrypted messages for decoding back at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion. Such wartime postings were life-changing adventures – travel out by flying boat or Indian railways, snakes in filing cabinets and heat so intense the perspiration ran into your shoes - but many of the secret listeners found lifelong romance in their far-flung corner of the world. Now, drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay tells their remarkable story at last.

Saving Bletchley Park
Saving Bletchley Park

Author: Sue Black

Publisher: Unbound Publishing

Published: 2016-03-10

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1783521678

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Imagine a Britain where the most important sites of historical significance are replaced with housing estates and supermarkets... Imagine a Britain without Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing and a team of code breakers changed the course of World War II and where thousands of women inspired future generations with their work in the fields of computing and technology... Now imagine a group of extraordinary people, who – seventy years after the birth of the modern computer at Bletchley Park – used technology to spark a social media campaign that helped secure its future and transform it into the world-class heritage and education centre it deserves to be. This is a story about saving Bletchley Park. But it is also the story of the hundreds of people who dedicated twenty years of hard work and determination to the campaign that saved it. It is a testament to the remarkable and mysterious work during World War II that made it a place worth saving. It is a book about campaigners, veterans, enthusiasts, computer geeks, technology, Twitter, trees and Stephen Fry stuck in a lift. And finally, it is a story about preserving the past for the generations of tomorrow.