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The story of the World War 2 de-coders of Bletchley Park continues to fascinate. How did Mair Thomas, a musician brought up in the Welsh valleys, find herself in the rarefied atmosphere of Hut Six, surrounded by hundreds of others, all desperately trying to break the German Enigma Code? Sworn to secrecy and working in cramped and uncomfortable conditions, Mair discovered her degree in German and Music was just what was needed. Drawn from the public schools and Oxbridge her background was very different to that of most of her colleagues and she didn't immediately fit in. This captivating memoir unpacks her daily life and explores the relationships she built. My Secret Life in Hut Six provides a fascinating insight into one woman's battle against Nazi Germany vividly capturing an era of danger, strain and day to day difficulties that were brightened occasionally by visits from the top brass, such as Winston Churchill.
Gethin Russell-Jones tries to understand more about his late father - a conscientious objector - and discovers a man he never really new - one who was prepared to suffer for an unpopular and unfashionable belief, and who exhibited a different kind of courage in doing so.
“Enigma’s ‘forgotten genius’ . . . [the] story of Alan Turing’s spymaster boss who led the team that cracked Hitler’s WWII codes” (Daily Mail). The Official Secrets Act and the passing of time have prevented the Bletchley Park story from being told by many of its key participants. Here at last is a book that allows some of them to speak for the first time. Gordon Welchman was one of the Park’s most important figures. Like Alan Turing, his pioneering work was fundamental to the success of Bletchley Park and helped pave the way for the birth of the digital age. Yet, his story is largely unknown to many. His book, The Hut Six Story, was the first to reveal not only how they brok...
The Bletchley Park memoir of Lord Asa Briggs will be one of the most important documents to be published in 2010. Lord Briggs has long been regarded as one of Britain's most important historians. He has never, however, written about his time at Bletchley Park. The publication, which coincided with Lord Briggs 90th birthday, is a meticulously researched account of life in Hut Six, written by a codebreaker who worked there for five years alongside Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman. In addition to discussing the progress of the Allies' code-breaking efforts and their impact on the war, Lord Briggs considers what the Germans knew about Bletchley and how they reacted to revelatory memoirs about the Enigma machine which were not published until the 1970s. Briggs himself did not tell his wife about his wartime career until the 1970s and his parents died without ever knowing their son's contribution to the wartime effort.
The highly eccentric Alfred Dillwyn Knox, known simply as 'Dilly', was one of the leading figures in the British codebreaking successes of the two world wars. During the first, he was the chief codebreaker in the Admiralty, breaking the German Navy's main flag code, before going on to crack the German Enigma ciphers during the Second World War at Bletchley Park. Here, he enjoyed the triumphant culmination of his life's work: a reconstruction of the Enigma machine used by the Abwehr, the German Secret Service. This kept the British fully aware of what the German commanders knew about Allied plans, allowing MI5 and MI6 to use captured German spies to feed false information back to the Nazi spymasters. Mavis Batey was one of 'Dilly's girls', the young female codebreakers who helped him to break the various Enigma ciphers. She was called upon to advise Kate Winslet, star of the film Enigma, on what it was like to be one of the few female codebreakers at Bletchley Park. This gripping new edition of Batey's critically acclaimed book reveals the vital part Dilly played in the deception operation that ensured the success of the D-Day landings, altering the course of the Second World War.
A captivating history of the highly secret group of women who helped win the Second World War. The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y-Service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. The Y-Service was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world. Hundreds of wireless operators, many of them who were civilians, listened to German, Italian and Japanese ...
Marion Hill has interviewed hundreds of people who worked at Station X to give a fascinating insight into the daily lives of the personnel who contributed to the breaking of the Enigma and other Axis codes.
A classic account of democracy's crisis of legitimacy The age of party democracy has passed, argues Peter Mair in Ruling the Void. The major parties have become so disconnected from society that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form. First published in 2013, Ruling the Void presciently observed that the widening gap between citizens and their political leaders posed a crisis of legitimacy for the governing class, and was fuelling populist mobilizations against it. Europe’s political elites had remodelled themselves as a homogeneous professional class, withdrawing into state institutions that offer relative stability in a world of fickle voters. Meanwhile, non-democratic agencies and practices proliferated – not least among them the European Union itself. Mair weighs the impact of these changes, and offers an authoritative assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today, not only in the varied democracies of Britain and the EU but throughout the developed world. With a new Introduction by Chris Bickerton, author of The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide.
This title allows users to effectively diagnose and treat any acute disease of the stomach, intestines, peritoneum, liver, and abdominal wall. Its authorship includes over 20 internationally recognized experts that provide critical information needed by practitioners for management of abdominal diseases. This informative resource provides a thorough discussion of normal and abnormal anatomy and physiology. Surgical techniques are broken down into an easy-to-read step-by-step format. This highly visual presentation, with over 410 illustrations, is a necessary edition to an equine practitioner’s library. Published by Teton New Media in the USA and distributed by Manson Publishing outside of North America.
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...