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The Secret Life of Bletchley Park
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WW11 Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There | Sinclair McKay
6 posts | 6 read | 5 to read
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.
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paisleyjess
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I found this after reading The Rose Code because I was so amazed the fictional story had real people behind it. This book was slow at times but still interesting to dive into a new part of history for me.

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paisleyjess
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Big snow storm this weekend. I'll be cuddled up with this book which I wanted to read after loving The Rose Code and finding out it is based on real people.

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emmaturi
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This was my non-fiction book for March. I visited BP while I was in London at the beginning of this month. I found it very interesting, each chapter was on a different theme. #nonfiction

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emmaturi
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So today I visited Bletchley Park, it was very interesting. Learning about the people who broke the codes, their lifes and the machines. We owe a lot to all these mem and women!

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Pedrocamacho
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This is a very informative read on all of the activities of the cryptographers of Bletchley Park. I hadn‘t previously read much about Colossus or Heath Robinson (both even more advanced predecessors of modern computers than the famous bombes) so I really loved that section.