Aurum The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The History of the Wartime Codebreaking Centre by the Men and Women Who Were There

For twenty years the history of the Second World War was top down produced by the statesmen – Churchill (1948-53), and the generals -Monty (1958) and Slim (1956), by the victors, the most notable general history by Basil Liddell Hart (1970). Then in 1975, much to the annoyance of countless of former young men and women who had signed the Official Secrets Act, vowing never to mention their wartime services, a fairly unfamiliar Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham changed everything by popularizing Ultra, cryptography, and the leafy suburb of the new town Milton Keynes at Bletchley Park, in Buckinghamshire, since then BP and code breaking has never been overlooked, or side-lined, but has been repositioned to the forefront of strategy and planning in the war.Sinclair McKay has been severely criticized in reviews here for producing a work that is based on material elsewhere. Is that bad, if it is successfully presented differently? That is part of professional scholarship if it succeeds.He wanted to highlight material as remembered by a handful of surviving witnesses who had never previously been consulted. Unfortunately, sixty years after the events these were only able to add limited ideas solely on I the cultural and social events -tea parties, dances, music appreciation, and amateur dramatics; II the food they consumed; III the type of accommodation and hosts; IV the growing disappointments and anxieties, of missed chances and boring careers after the adventurous days of BP, and, most of all, that V each Hut and its personnel were daily sealed off from all others - the author reports that even the 14 year old messenger Mimi Galilee delivering the post on site had to knock and wait for the each hut to be opened to outsiders, so it was rare with different working shifts and isolated procedures that members of one hut might meet up with colleagues from elsewhere at the Park. Indeed, if they went out on nature rambles, picnics or to the cinema in town with others, they would never talk shop, not solely because of the Secrets Act they had signed, but because they firmly and unquestionably believed that “careless talk” did cost lives, and if that was insufficient to prevent friendly but curious small talk, there were rumours circulating, real or invented, of individuals who uttered “Bletchley” away would face consequences – which for them signified being black balled: legally and socially becoming unmentionable non-persons, and possibly landed with a conviction.In certain of these chapters they were able to confirm known evidence, sometimes adding a new treasured anecdotes representing the atmosphere of a past age, but were the ideas and feelings those they held then, or those they had learnt since 1975? Nostalgia does make people see events through clouded tinted lenses.The aim of the book was essentially valid; sadly not all the themes – the technical aspects, and on spying, could be tested with the new witnesses, and so other resources had to be used. The volume now should be viewed less as a single bible in 320 pages, but a recent primer on the latest claims and ideas about Bletchley, which means that certain other primary and secondary sources first used previously, such as Professor FH Hinsley’s edited multi-volume official series on British Intelligence in the Second World War (1979-93), though not cited in the very scarce-looking bibliography, should be considered introductions to the subsequent much-quoted Codebreakers by Hinsley & Stripp (1993).As a primer, however, with greater interest by a younger generation in cinema, with different objectives - intended to entertain, not to inform, there is a risk that audiences will be brought up with new myths and falsehoods, or becoming dis- or even misinformed, which in future could risk causing gross misunderstandings about the protagonists and the historical events.McKay succeeds in giving (a) credit to Polish scientists Rejewski, Rozycki and Zygalski of the Polish Cipher Bureau in codebreaking the German military since 1932; observing (b) Alan Turing was not necessarily the only homosexual; stressing that (c) despite the incident of the apple in the Snow White fable the certainty of Turing’s intended suicide and it occurred by accident is still debatable; (d) that the dangers of a Soviet spy in John Cairncross (and even Kim Philby had he come) at BP was perhaps not as evident at the time as that of the presence of the SOE agent and CP member in Cairo (later official historian of the CPGB) James Klugman, who passed on or held back decrypts to the right bodies and individuals who best would help the Soviet war effort and the advance of Stalin’s Communism across the globe; and that (e) Dr Tommy Flowers, the brilliant GPO electrical engineer, who co-built the Lorenz cipher, codenamed “Tunny”, was allowed to run two of the ten Colossus machines for another decade until 1960 at the GCHQ, in Cheltenham, before being ordered in an act of wanton cultural barbarity to dismantle equipment and burn all the drawings and plans.What the author instead does not underline – which is important, is that contrary to the novel by Robert Harris (1995) and the film adaptation Enigma in 2001, and The Imitation Game (2014), based on Andrew Hodges biography of Alan Turing (1983), but released after McKay’s book, Turing never worked with Cairncross, so there no possibility of his being blackmailed for his homosexuality, something that was obviously felt by his fiancée Joan Clarke, even before Turing decided to be inform her of his hidden tendencies. Was that another additional by the writer and film director just to spice up the story?Churchill, and through him, Sir Robert Menzies, Director of MI6, was known to have ordered everything on codebreaking at Bletchley to be destroyed at the end of the war, in 1945 – a bonfire scene seen in The Imitation Game, not because they did not want the Soviets or the rest of the world to know of its existence, but not to permit likely moles and fellow travelers to steal vital technical data of the post-war Allies in the divided world. This means they feared they were harbouring spies.The first unanswered question, however, - not even hinted by the author, is who decided to land the killer blow later in 1960, and why, when such a decision was definitely detrimental to the future of the nascent British computer industry and to the economy? Harold Macmillan was Premier, and through marriage to his wife, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, he was related by to John F Kennedy, then US President. Was it a case of an earlier Westland affair with greater and better links with the USA after the Suez debacle rather than going it alone? Was that decided exclusively by the Prime minister alone or in consultation with past leaders?Secondly, why did the author mention so much about Flowers at the end when he was called upon to destroy Britain’s past and future. Besides, codebreaking he had been personally involved in 1944 in tracing V1 buzz bombs and V2 rockets at home and on the continent with artillery surveyors (Mangilli-Climpson, 2007). McKay hints personal jealousies with other scientists, but those facts merely cloud, rather than strengthen the possible causes, and one can’t disregard young scientists eager to switch loyalties and work across the Atlantic if the chance was right and the money was good when the alternatives seemed grim and less promising at home.Thirdly, why was Winterbotham allowed to lift the lid to wartime codebreaking in 1975 when the Cold War was still in progress? It is he who provided the Bletchley Park industry and Turing with a new bill of health, and allowed all to reveal a part of their lives previously hidden, imagined by others as such as dark, bad and illegal. Is the answer again found in the archives in Washington / Moscow, or a sign Britain was trying to stand aside again from its Special Western partner and trying to brace itself up, promoting all its past greatness and values to its new European Community friends in Brussels and Strasbourg, being told that they were now working not just with Britain, then described as the “Sick man of Europe”, but Great Britain, still one of the greats at the UN, and a useful additional member to the European family of nations.With the tools Sinclair McKay used, his goal proved unattainable, and so the result looks old-hat, miserable, and insignificant. He needed to think again, ask new questions to unlock unimagined secrets. Even with one breakthrough he might supply tentative plausible explanations. Instead, he preferred the old set format, and so The Secret Life still remains as secret as before, as perhaps he wished. This book is a primer with faults, which some, no doubt, will enjoy criticizing to explain their own incomplete secret vision of Bletchley. It is worth a look to spot the new bits – full of unthought of secrets!

Mainly about the people at Bletchley Park. How it was working and living there. It doesn't delve so much -as other less engaging books do- on the intricacies of code breaking and the maths involved, so it's much more fun to read. You get an insight into how hard it was to work there and the clash of personalities but also about how they went about their everyday life and enjoyed their time out. Perhaps the best book to start reading about Bletchley. Highly recommended.

This interesting book deals primarily in an anecdotal sort of way with the characters of the Bletchley staff and their social/professional interactions. It makes essential mention of the technical nature of the operation and of the huge contribution Bletchley made to the allied war effort, but should be read after or in conjunction with other books which more fully describe the technical performance of the Bletchley equipments and the brilliant academic/technical minds which went in to the design, production and operation of the decyphering equipments.Bletchley would not have worked without those (often eccentric) brilliant minds, its state-of-art engineering, the dedicated efforts of its staff and (somewhat miraculously) the maintenance of total secrecy about the whole operation notwithstanding there having been up to 9000+ people working there.This book provides particular insight into the two last of these factors and adds "colour" to one's appreciation of the other two when reading more widely elsewhere about the more technical aspects of the operation.

I recently watched a documentary on BBC2 about the WW2 codebreakers, and my reaction to the fascinating subject was to immediately go to Amazon.co.uk and find book that would tell me more. This was the book I bought, and I am glad that I did. This really is a fascinating book, that lifts the veil on an extraordinary place and the dedicated men and women who spent the war years undertaking such crucial work. One of the things which both amazed and impressed me the most, was the level of secrecy that was needed, for Bletchley park to be able to exist at all. The thousands of people who worked there - kept silent - with each other, and with their families after the war - right up untill the 1980's. Additionally the people of the surrounding areas who provided "billets" for these hordes of Bletchley workers, not only kept quiet - but didn't even ask their boarders what it was they were doing up at the park. In the world we are living in now, such secracy is unimaginable. I must admit - some of the mathematical, engineery, code descriptions and details - went a tiny bit over my befuddled head - however this is a very accessible book, and certainly not academic or dry. Even the sections I found hardest to understand - and there were only a couple - were still strangely fascinating to read - and I know I have come away from the book with a much better understanding of code breaking than I would otherwise have ever had. The majority of the book however, and what makes it so readable, is about the people who worked there, the society girls, the brilliant ox-bridge minds, the factory workers, the romances, the dances and plays, the miserably cold huts and the revolting food.

I ordered this book together with Fish, Blood & Bone. When the fish, blood & bone was delivered it was in a very flimsy box and the fish etc. was quite heavy. The box was not strong enough for the package and was partly falling apart. Therefore I think that the book which should have been in the box had fallen out somewhere. I would still like to receive it as it was supposed to be a Xmas present for my son.