Bletchley Park Magazine – Issue 4 by Cultureshock Media

THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK

UNTOLD STORIES WORLD WAR ONE CODEBREAKING AND THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK

MEET THE CODEBREAKERS OF WORLD WAR ONE Opening to the public Friday 5 June 2015 Friends Private View 4 June 2015 (6-8pm) RSVP: friends@bletchleypark.org.uk

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Issue no. 4 Spring 2015

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ROCK128 Bletchley Imitation Game DVD Mag Advert 2.pdf

26/03/2015

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ROCK132 DEBS Ad 1.pdf

THE IMITATION GAME based on Andrew Hodges' book, Alan Turing: The Enigma

26/03/2015

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THE DEBS OF BLETCHLEY PARK by Michael Smith On sale in the Bletchley Park shop is The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories by Michael Smith, author of numerous histories on Bletchley Park. Also available online.

Get your copy of The Imitation Game DVD from the Bletchley Park shop or online. Price: £15.99

Price: £20.00

www.bletchleypark.org.uk

CMY

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FOR BLETCHLEY PARK Chief Executive Officer: Iain Standen Director of Development: Claire Glazebrook Director of Marketing and Communications: Kelsey Griffin Media Relations Manager: Katherine Lynch Bletchley Park Trust Ltd The Mansion Bletchley Park Milton Keynes MK3 6EB Tel: +44 (0) 1908 640404 Bletchley Park Shop: shop@bletchleypark.org.uk Friends & Veterans Office: +44 (0) 1908 272652 Email: friends@bletchleypark.org.uk www.bletchleypark.org.uk Original Concept Design: Rose www.rosedesign.co.uk Photography Front cover image: Image courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston, DENN 3/2 and DENN 3/3. Copyright unknown. Photographs © Shaun Armstrong / mubsta.com Historical images: Crown Copyright. By kind permission Director GCHQ FOR CULTURESHOCK MEDIA Publisher: Phil Allison Contributing Editor: David Jays Sub Editor: Ian Massey Editorial team: Rachel Potts, Shula Subramaniam, Simon Arthur, Olivia Hamilton Art Director: Alfonso Iacurci Designers: Hannah Dossary, Helen McFarland, Fanny Wacklin Nilsson Production Manager: Nicola Vanstone PUBLISHED TWICE A YEAR BY Cultureshock Media 27b Tradescant Road London SW8 1XD +44 (0) 207 7359263 www.cultureshockmedia.co.uk Printed in England © Bletchley Park Trust 2015

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CONTENTS 3 LETTER FROM THE CEO Iain Standen highlights the importance of World War One codebreaking for Bletchley Park and introduces an exciting upcoming exhibition 4 NEWS Updates on the restoration and a look at future projects 7 MYTHBUSTERS Mick Smith asks: are the rumours about Winston Churchill and Bletchley Park true?

46 VISITOR INFORMATION Tickets, opening times and members’ events 48 MY BLETCHLEY Insights from historian and author Sinclair McKay, who knows Bletchley Park inside out

F E AT U R E S 18 UNTOLD STORY Bletchley Park hosts the first major exhibition about the Codebreakers of World War One. What does it uncover? 26 ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN SECRET INTELLIGENCE LAND A Lewis Carroll parody, written by two Codebreakers and performed in 1918, provides a curious window into their world

8 ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE How a comic novel from the 1920s became a low-tech instrument of espionage 12 VETERAN STORIES A former Wren, a WAAF Teleprinter Operator and a Cryptanalyst share their World War Two memories

40 THE FORGOTTEN WOMEN – REMEMBERED The authors of two recent books share stories of the vital but often overlooked women who worked at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park Trust Ltd The Mansion, Bletchley Park Milton Keynes, MK3 6EB Tel: +44 (0) 1908 640404 2

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Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

LETTER FROM THE CEO IAIN STANDEN Welcome to the latest Bletchley Park Magazine. In the last magazine I highlighted how Bletchley Park was thriving in the wake of its formal relaunch by Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge, and I am pleased to report that this remains the case. This has also been greatly assisted by the fantastic publicity that accompanied the film biopic of Alan Turing, The Imitation Game, which itself has helped to draw more attention to Bletchley Park and the work conducted by the Codebreakers. The result has been that in 2014 Bletchley Park hosted just over 195,000 visitors and 9,000 school visits – our best year ever! And this upward trend continues in early 2015. Readers will be pleased to note that the Bletchley Park Trust, far from resting on its laurels, continues to open new offerings to interest and inspire our visitors. So in March we saw the launch of a temporary exhibition in Hut 12 telling the story of the restoration process and the exciting ‘finds’ discovered during Project NEPTUNE. But the biggest new offering is our exhibition about World War One codebreaking, The Road to Bletchley Park, which opens in the Block C Visitor Centre in June 2015. This exhibition is the main theme running through this magazine.

It is very fitting that the exhibition opens this year during the World War One Centenary commemorations that are underway in the United Kingdom and around the world. As many readers will be aware, the work of Codebreakers in World War One, while not as extensive or well-known as the efforts in World War Two, none the less greatly assisted the war effort, and from a Bletchley Park perspective provided the training ground for a number of the Codebreakers who arrived here in the very early days of World War Two. We are certain that visitors will find this exhibition fascinating and that it will be yet another new dimension to our offering at Bletchley Park. I hope that you will enjoy reading this magazine and enjoy finding out a little more about the subject matter and how the exhibition has been put together, and, hopefully inspired, will pay another visit to Bletchley Park.

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Images: Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

T H I S Y E A R AT B L E TC H L E Y PA R K . . . Historic Bletchley Park: Rescued and Restored

The Story of the Mansion Rooms

Cyber Security online exhibition

Exciting new finds, some discovered inside the ceiling of Hut 6 during restoration, are on display in a new exhibition in Hut 12. The only known examples of used ‘Banbury sheets’, a method of Enigma decryption devised by Alan Turing in 1940 to overcome the lack of cribs in Naval Enigma; a ‘time capsule’ left inside a door in Hut 11a and artefacts found during trench-work feature alongside insights into the painstaking work behind the site’s renovation. An online Google Cultural Institute exhibition accompanies the display.

A new exhibition will explore the extraordinary work that went on in the Bletchley Park Mansion through wallbased displays and Veteran recollections. The exhibition will also provide information on the Official Secrets Act and legislation used during wartime by the United Kingdom and other countries to secure national secrets.

As part of its continued collaboration with McAfee, Bletchley Park stages an online exhibition, a virtual display bringing the Home of the Codebreakers into the modern world. In partnership with the on-site Cyber Security display, the exhibition will teach online visitors about Internet safety and privacy and launches later this year.

NEWS 4

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CO M I N G SO O N TO B L E TC H L E Y PA R K . . . Bletchley Park and D-Day

The Annual Loebner Prize returns

Plug up and go

What impact did Bletchley Park’s team of puzzle-solving Codebreakers actually have on the front line during World War Two? A large-scale exhibition set to open in 2018 will explain just how important Bletchley Park’s wartime influence was. Situated in the Teleprinter Hall, the display will focus on Bletchley Park’s crucial role in the success of D-Day and conclude with a look at the relevance of the birthplace of modern computing today.

This year Bletchley Park Trust will yet again host the Loebner Prize. On 19 September ‘chatbot’ computer programmes will compete to prove signs of artificial intelligence in a competition based on the Turing Test.

2017 will see the restoration of Hut 11a completed. One of the first huts to house Bombe machines, it was important in the deciphering of German Enigma codes. Visitors will be invited to join WRNS staff and try to figure out how the complex Bombe machines work.

Broadcast live at Bletchley Park by Sky News, last year’s prize was judged by two computer scientists alongside Top Gear’s James May and psychologist Dr Ian Hocking. They awarded Rose, by America’s Bruce Wilcox, the $4,000 bronze medal for being most humanlike. Since its inception by Dr Hugh Loebner in 1991, no programme has won the $25,000 silver award. As Dr Hocking blogged afterwards, conversation requires not only language, but ‘empathy, creativity, memory, and a dozen other faculties’.

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Images: Shaun Armstrong © www.mubsta.com

B L E TC H L E Y PA R K P R E S E N TS…

B R I G H T S PA R K S @ B L E TC H L E Y PA R K

The prestigious Bletchley Park Presents… lecture series invites prominent writers, historians and other experts to explore the site’s fascinating history and legacy. Events include tea, cake and book signings.

Bletchley Park is open during the school holidays for fun and educational visits for the whole family. Enjoy quizzes and spy workshops that cater for every age, and experience the history and learn about the amazing work of the Codebreakers. Check the website www.bletchleypark. org.uk for specific dates and details.

21 June Taylor Downing — Winston Churchill and the Codebreaking Blunders of the First World War The writer, historian and award-winning television producer discusses the cryptanalysts of World War One, and their steep learning curve under the controlling leadership of Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty. Downing, most recently author of Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code Breakers and Propagandists of the Great War, explores how these early Codebreakers eventually found success. 19 July Sinclair McKay — Secret Life of Fighter Command Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the historian, journalist and Bletchley Park expert,

Sinclair McKay, talks about his new book, The Secret Life of Fighter Command. Drawing on numerous interviews, he delves into the RAF’s lone fight against the Luftwaffe in 1940 and sheds new light on their countrywide battle against invasion. McKay writes for the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal and The Spectator. 20 Sept Tessa Dunlop — The Bletchley Girls Broadcaster and historian Tessa Dunlop will be discussing her recently released book Bletchley Girls. For the book Dunlop interviewed female Veterans who took up vital roles in Bletchley Park’s war effort. You can read more about Bletchley Girls on page 40. Tickets available online at www.bletchleypark.org.uk

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BLETCHLEY MYTHBUSTERS Michael Smith asks... Did Churchill tunnel his way to Bletchley Park, and did he really l eave Coventry to burn?

Top: Michael Smith Below: Prime Minister Winston Churchill surveys the damage to Coventry Cathedral in an official war photograph, 28 September 1941

No one man is associated with more myths surrounding Bletchley Park than Winston Churchill. His association with the British Codebreakers began at the start of World War One when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he ordered the creation of a naval codebreaking unit, known for reasons of secrecy as Room 40. The far-fetched stories include one that as Britain’s World War Two Prime Minister he visited the Codebreakers so often that there was a tunnel built from Bletchley Junction station into Bletchley Park so that he could arrive as and when he liked in order to find out the latest intelligence. It is, of course, complete nonsense. He visited just once, on 6 September 1941, and he certainly didn’t have to make the trip to see the intelligence – all the important documents were taken to him every morning by Stewart Menzies, the head of MI6.

The worst myth is the suggestion that he ordered the RAF to ignore Bletchley Park’s warning that Coventry was to be bombed on 14 November 1940 because he wanted to prevent the Germans realising Enigma had been broken. Once again, it’s nonsense. Every day around lunchtime, one of the Enigma cyphers revealed which town or city in Britain the Luftwaffe would be bombing that night, allowing the RAF and the air raid wardens to prepare for the attack, and thus save thousands of lives. But there was no warning for Coventry. Some 600 people were killed and a substantial part of the city, including the cathedral, was destroyed. This had nothing to do with Churchill protecting the Enigma secret, or why would other cities have been warned when it was their turn? The truth is that around the time of the Coventry raid, the Codebreakers were unable to crack that particular Enigma cypher and simply did not know that the city was about to be attacked. The final myth is that at the end of that visit to Bletchley Park in September 1941, the great man was so bemused by some of the idiosyncratic personalities he had met that he turned to Menzies, who controlled the unit, and said: ‘I know I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I didn’t expect you to take me literally.’ I say it’s a myth, but I can’t tell you for sure that it isn’t true – and there’s a part of me that really wishes it were.

Michael Smith is the author of The Debs of Bletchley Park, The Secrets of Station X and co-editor with Ralph Erskine of The Bletchley Park Codebreakers. He is a Trustee of Bletchley Park and Chair of the Trust’s Historical Advisory Committee.

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ONE FROM THE ARCHIVE

SPYING BY THE BOOK

Donated to the Bletchley Park Trust by former MI6 member Bill Miller, his copy of Eric Linklater’s Poet’s Pub was far more than an addition to his bookshelf – it was an instrument of espionage. Proving that encryption wasn’t limited to machines such as the Enigma and Lorenz, innocuous cipher books became part of the weaponry yielded by secret intelligence agents in World War Two. Bletchley Park’s Senior Archivist, Richard Lewis, tells the story of Bill and his book, and explains how the cipher process works

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Who did this cipher book belong to? rICHArD lEWIS – Bill Miller, who worked for MI6. What do we know about his role in World War Two? rl — He was based in Spain and then Tangier, working as both a radio operator transmitting and receiving messages and a codist enciphering and deciphering them. Bill’s other jobs included monitoring the French battleship Jean Bart that was docked in Casablanca and the Germans who were themselves monitoring Gibraltar. Were you surprised when you learned that something as everyday as a book was used in secret intelligence? rl — Very, but the more I thought about it, the more inspired I realised it was. If you saw a popular contemporary book sitting on someone’s coffee table, it would look innocuous. Even if you had your suspicions, you would need the key number before you could attempt to read any messages.

MI6 agent Bill Miller in Tangier, January 1943

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Images: © Crown Copyright: By kind permission Director GCHQ

Miller used the personal key ‘10817’ to transform the comic novel Poet’s Pub into a codebook

Miller had also worked in Spain and was an MI6 radio operator and codist

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‘They sent me out to buy five copies of the same Penguin book, but not from the same place’ How does a book cipher work? rl — A page is selected in the book at random and its page number recorded. A line is then chosen where the first couple of words have approximately 12 to 15 letters. The page (turned into three figures) and the line (turned into two figures) then provide a five-figure number. This is added to the sender’s personal key, which is also a five figure number, and this produces an encoded indicator group. A grid is then formed using the words selected to specify the placing of the letters. The person receiving the message would subtract the sender’s key from the indicator group to get the page and line numbers, allowing them to re-create the grid and read the message.

How would a book be chosen? rl — Bill’s was selected at random: ‘They sent me out to buy five copies of the same Penguin book, but not from the same place. So I went round to various bookstalls and bought copies of Poet’s Pub by Eric Linklater, which happened to be the latest Penguin publication on sale.’ And the personal key? rl — Bill chose 10817 as it represented his house number and birthday. Are there any books that were favoured as ciphers? rl — No. The key thing was to ensure that the same edition of the same book was used. I suspect favoured books would have been a weakness in the system, as choosing them at random offered greater security.

How did this book become part of the Bletchley Park Trust’s archive? rl — We were very fortunate as Bill, having done some training at Bletchley Park, approached the Trust and offered it to us. What do tools such as book ciphers tell us about the nature of secret intelligence in World War Two? rl — They demonstrate the ingeniousness of some of the techniques used, and how incredibly intelligent and practical the people involved were. Book ciphers have often featured in fiction. What do you think it is about them that captures the imagination? rl — I think the fact that they are low-tech yet sophisticated, very simple yet at the same time fantastically clever. They also offer people the chance to believe that they too could encipher their own messages should they so wish.

How secure are book ciphers? rl — Assuming the personal key is not known, they are in theory unbreakable.

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ÂŠ Crown Copyright: By kind permission Director GCHQ 12

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VETERANS’ STORIES Fully searchable online since summer 2013, the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour lists more than 10,500 names, recording and recognising their achievements after decades of secrecy. Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne collects Veterans’ memories for perpetuity. Volunteers record interviews with people who worked at Bletchley Park and related postings, visiting them across the country and even recently in California – over Skype.

With more than 220 interviews collected so far, the project ‘really tells us what happened here’, Jonathan explains, ensuring the story of wartime signals intelligence is recounted as fully as possible. Interviews still unearth new insights, which are drawn upon across Bletchley Park’s work, including in the museum itself. Veterans can be added to the Roll of Honour online, where they can choose whether they would like to tell their story for the record too. To view the Roll of Honour or to add a name, visit rollofhonour.bletchleypark. org.uk and click ‘add a record’.

WRNS Dorothy Du Boisson and Elsie Booker operate the codebreaking machine Colossus, a more sophisticated descendant of the Heath Robinson, at Bletchley Park Bletchley Park Magazine

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BARBARA HART, NÉE TUCKER

Bletchley Park, Wren in the Newmanry, February 1943 – August 1945; Naval Section, August 1945 – December 1945. Interviewed July 2014.

had this class full of dotty giggling little Wrens. Some of them only seventeen. Less than teenagers – schoolgirls.

Barbara left school at 16 and was recruited to the WRNS from Cardiff Central Library. I did my WRNS training at a ministerial college in Leeds and was given a sort of navy blue dress – it was just awful. I had my photograph taken and I sent it home to my parents, and my father was so upset when he saw it he cried! I think all the girls I trained with went to Bletchley Park. [When we got there] we went to the Newmanry with John Herivel for maths and IQ tests. He had patience… he was only young himself and 14

Barbara worked on the machine that preceded Colossus and was dubbed Heath Robinson. The machines were housed in the Newmanry which received enemy messages from the intercept station at Knockholt. These messages, encrypted with the Lorenz cipher, were punched onto paper tape and mounted on a Heath Robinson machine. A successful run would help deduce some of the settings of the Lorenz machine used to encrypt the message. Because the tapes were so noisy… we had a hood with a telephone in and it wasn’t always possible to hear. I loved my time in the Newmanry. I really enjoyed every minute of it. There was an Army group, part of Major Tester’s staff, through a hatchway to next door. We were never allowed in there, but I think most of the tapes used to go through that hatchway. My husband [Ronald Hart] worked in the Testery – we met through that hatchway! He, like me, left school at 16, but he was always very good at crosswords.

When a few Americans arrived, breakfasts at Bletchley Park improved. There was one we all absolutely adored called George Vergine. All the girls thought he was lovely. Some Americans worked in the Testery; they cheered everything up. You weren’t told anything. We just got on with it. Those girls that worked on the big Colossus did a wonderful job. It must have been very uncomfortable – those valves sent off a tremendous heat. I was promoted to Petty Officer. After Germany surrendered, everything came to a stop. I was then moved to the Naval Section sorting out captured U-boat documents. There were sacks full of not only documents but personal belongings – photographs of families and cameras. I didn’t really like that. I felt sad about that. But it was a job that had to be done. Later I did a different job, to do with hydrography. I was asked by Commander Tandy to do whatever I could about these captured U-boat charts – all in long drawers, stacked high. Day after day I sorted them all out in their areas and numbers. I obviously did the right thing as I received a handwritten letter of thanks from Frank Birch.

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Below: Frank Birch thanks Miss Tucker for her efforts

Dear Miss Tucker, Many thanks for, and many congratulations on, what Commander Tandy describes as ‘an extraordinarily good job at a difficult and unfamiliar task’ in coping single-handed with the dispatch of our total stock of German navigational charts and the Hydrographer. It really is a very fine achievement for a newcomer in NS VI. Yours sincerely, Frank Birch

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MRS VERA MORGAN, NÉE POULTER

Chicksands, WAAF Teleprinter Operator, February 1943 – July 1946. Interviewed December 2014.

I was put on the teleprinter there. The very first message I sent was to inform the parents of a young Canadian flyer that he had lost his life in a flying accident. I shall never forget that. This was also where I was asked to sign the Official Secrets Act. After security vetting I was posted to RAF Chicksands in February 1943. We worked in a large room with about ten teleprinters in it and the chatter of the machines was noisy. Each teleprinter had ‘tied lines’ which linked us directly to Bletchley Park. Vera fought a reluctant boss to leave for the forces. Even though she was blind in her right eye from birth, she passed her medical and became a Teleprinter Operator. I was sent first to RAF Morecambe for drill and basic training and then to RAF Cranwell for an eight-week teleprinter course. Then I was told to report to RAF Harwell, in Berkshire (home to RAF 38 Bomber Group, Wellingtons) – on Christmas Day 1942. 16

The wireless operators did the actual intercepting, and their messages, which consisted of five-letter groups, were brought over to us by a corporal and a sergeant. Our job was to copy-type the groups at great speed and with extreme accuracy before transmitting direct to Bletchley Park. Every message was checked and signed before it went over to the Codebreakers, where the encryption was cracked. The pace was frenetic, right up until D-Day in 1944.

After the war, Vera worked as a civilian Teleprinter Operator for the Admiralty and met her future husband, George, on a ski-ing trip with a friend. George also served in the RAF during the war as a part of the Lancaster Pathfinder Squadrons. But we never really talked much about the war and tended more to look forward. George and I were married in March 1951. Nowadays I like to go to the reunions and I also spend my time as a volunteer with the Not Forgotten Association, which does wonderful work with ex-servicemen who need support.

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DR ROBIN BOYD

Aldford House, London, Cryptanalyst in Diplomatic Research Section, February 1944 – July 1945. Interviewed November 2013.

‘I worked on the eighth floor of Aldford House, luxury flats on Park Lane. You worked with interesting colleagues, but you didn’t talk about your work’

I was in my second year at Trinity College, Dublin, studying classics. I wanted to join up and do something worthwhile, as my brother had been killed in Burma in 1942. Someone I knew at Trinity had gone to Bletchley – he never mentioned the name – and said there was a job I could apply for that was more important than piloting a Liberator. My school was arranging interviews. After his interview, in September 1943 Robin went to the Inter-Service Special Intelligence School (ISSIS) in Bedford for cryptanalysis training, then to an outstation of Bletchley Park in London. I worked on the eighth floor of Aldford House, luxury flats on Park Lane. You worked with interesting colleagues, but you didn’t talk about your work.

I was in a room full of young women trying to break into diplomatic messages that came in. We were hunting for a ‘depth’ – which may have come from an error by a cypher clerk. In Dutch signals, there was a particular nine-letter word that might be in any message. If you had two messages and bits of them were the same, you could arrange them under each other and unravel the whole thing. My work went off to Bletchley Park, and we were very conscious that we were a branch of Bletchley Park. We never got feedback or knew the result of our work. To this day I have never been there.

It was a very interesting time to be in London: Myra Hess piano recitals in the National Gallery, ballet with Margot Fonteyn – a cushy existence. So I joined ‘Dad’s Army’, manning rocket projectors in Hyde Park. I was on duty on 15 June 1944, the first night the flying bombs came over and we fired our rockets, but Mr Churchill decided we were doing more damage than anything else, so that stopped. After the war I finished my degree and went into the Ministry. Later I spent years in Australia and India. When the story of Bletchley Park came out, it awoke my interest again. I got the books, but I still thought of it as something that happened back then in a different life. It was a very good feeling when we eventually got our badges and on to the Roll of Honour, and could see our friends and colleagues there. Bletchley Park Magazine

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An exhibition design reveals how The Road to Bletchley Park will incorporate an office accessory favoured by Codebreaker Dilly Knox – his bathtub

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UNTOLD STORY The Road to Bletchley Park is the first major exhibition to explore British signals intelligence in World War One. Sarah Ralph explains why we should celebrate the pioneering achievements of those who waged the secret war â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and how they paved the way for the Bletchley Park Codebreakers

Images courtesy of University of Aberdeen, Papers of Malcolm Vivian Hay of Seaton. MS 2788 2/17.

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In many ways the story of signals intelligence in World War One is an untold but crucial one, because a large number of those involved went on to work with the newly formed Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) in 1919, which then relocated to Bletchley Park in 1939. Their efforts from 1914 to 1918 allowed the Codebreakers to hit the ground running at the outbreak of World War Two. There are two phases to The Road to Bletchley Park. The first, which opens in June, sets the scene for the remarkable individuals involved and the technologies they used. We introduce the two codebreaking organisations: MI1(b), set up by the Army, and Room 40, established by the Navy. The second phase, which opens in 2017, will further explore the listening stations, Zeppelin raids, naval warfare and the astonishing story of the Zimmermann telegram.

Courtesy Time Inc., LIFE magazine

One of the key objectives of the exhibition is for visitors to become excited about this untold story. We more often than not think of World War One in terms of the terrible conditions in the trenches and loss of life, but there is another side to the conflict – the secret war of signals intelligence. Even after the end of hostilities, this work remained largely undisclosed. But if you visit this exhibition at Bletchley Park, you can gain an insight into the battle fought behind the scenes in offices.

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

CABLE GUYS

As the exhibition demonstrates, this vital work depended on communication technologies such as cable telegraphy and wireless telegraphy, which may seem quite established to us, but are actually relatively recent – just over 100 years old. Both the Allies and Central Powers used these to allow them to intercept messages and deduce enemy tactics and positions. Each side tried to break the other’s codes and gain valuable intelligence.

Cable telegraphy is the other major technology that was vital to this intelligence work. It had been developed during the late 19th century, with the All Red Line established by the British to connect the empire in a network of centralised communication. One of the first decisive acts of the war by Britain was cutting the underwater cables that linked Germany to the rest of the world, so that the enemy could not use these channels to communicate.

A key exhibit is a replica of a Marconi crystal receiver listening set. Guglielmo Marconi had been developing his wireless telegraphy technology commercially, but when war broke out he and the Marconi Company worked in collaboration with the British military so that they could make full use of it. His staff co-operated closely with the Royal Navy’s codebreaking section to exploit the technology in interception and location work (direction finding). This set was used to receive wireless messages. (Marconi is now a subsidiary of BAE Systems, co-sponsor of The Road to Bletchley Park. On page 23, Kevin Taylor, Managing Director of BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, explains why the company is delighted to support the exhibition, and how it relates to today’s communications and security industry.)

Both sides engaged in ‘cable wars’ – cutting through each other’s cables. The exhibition includes a photograph of a section of cable that was cut by the Germans that connected Arendal in Norway and Newbiggin in Northumberland. The repair team found some strange metal attachments as well as a note that read: ‘No more Reuter war-lies on this line! Kindest regards from a “Hun” and “Sea Pirate”.’ All enemy telegrams that were sent via cable networks under British control were stopped, and there was a ban on the use of private codes. This was a great boost to British intelligence. The British weren’t supposed to stop and read communications sent by Allied or neutral governments – but they did, which led to breakthroughs such as the intercept of the incendiary Zimmermann telegram, which hastened the entrance of the US into the war.

Guglielmo Marconi operating apparatus similar to that he used to transmit the first wireless signal across the Atlantic, 1901 20

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Image courtesy of University of Aberdeen, Papers of Malcolm Vivian Hay of Seaton. MS 2788 2/17.

A photograph from Major Hay’s ‘farewell book’ shows the MI1(b) Codebreakers, probably at work in their Cork Street offices

‘One of the first decisive acts of the war by Britain was cutting the underwater cables that linked Germany to the rest of the world’ Bletchley Park Magazine

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SHIP AHOY Wireless and cable technologies allowed messages to be intercepted, but what was to be done with them? Vice Admiral H.F. Oliver, Director of the Naval Intelligence Division, turned to Sir Alfred Ewing, Director of Naval Education. Ewing was a physicist and engineer with an interest in codes – he is said to have consulted code books at the British Museum, the General Post Office and Lloyd’s of London. The Navy’s codebreaking department, Room 40, 22

included sharp young talents such as Alastair Denniston, who would go on to head GC&CS in 1919 and remain in charge when the organisation moved to Bletchley Park in 1939. One of my favourite exhibits related to the work in Room 40 is a copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships. I love this book. It’s an exhaustive catalogue of every nation’s warships (and continues to be published today). This copy belonged to Room 40,

and every time a ship was sunk they would cross out the name. It is a very physical way of marking the conflict’s progress.

Above: The Road to Bletchley Park will build interactive features into exhibition elements, many inspired by the real spaces used by the Codebreakers

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A WORD FROM THE SPONSORS ‘The Navy’s codebreaking department, Room 40, included sharp young talents such as Alastair Denniston’

Kevin Taylor, Managing Director of BAE Systems Applied Intelligence

Mark Anderson, Director of Group Marketing, Ultra Electronics

The skills and technologies first developed during World War One have played a pivotal role in the development of techniques that have been at the heart of our national security ever since. It is therefore fitting that, as we honour all those who took part in the war, we recognise the key part played by the early pioneers of modern communications and intelligence.

The story of Bletchley Park is about celebrating technology and innovation in the most demanding circumstances imaginable. That challenge, in our own way, is what we aspire to at Ultra Electronics – developing modern technologies for the most challenging situations.

The exhibition The Road to Bletchley Park also reflects BAE Systems’ own heritage, including historic predecessor companies such as the Marconi Company, which played a leading role in the development of modern telecommunications. During World War One, the wireless radio technology developed by Marconi was an essential part of the war at sea, helping the Royal Navy to co-ordinate its activity and maintain the upper hand.    We are absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to sponsor this exhibition, especially given the part that these pioneers played in our own history as well. The work that we do today, such as providing secure IT systems and threat intelligence, which helps to protect the Government and critical national infrastructure from increasingly sophisticated and pervasive cyber threats, would not be possible without the breakthroughs made at Bletchley Park.

This exhibition represents a nice alignment with Ultra’s history. Founded soon after World War One, the company was involved in radio technology and communications in the period leading up to World War Two, and has a distinguished history of providing high-encryption devices to government, military and commerce. Our business is all about protecting highly sensitive data. I was a career naval officer before joining Ultra, so on a personal level I am fascinated by the naval history that the exhibition explores. There is so much about the history of Bletchley Park that appeals to me – I have always envied Dilly Knox keeping a bath in his office! I’d like one of those, just to give me a chance to shut out the world and think. During World War Two, Bletchley Park created a space in which immensely talented, if sometimes eccentric, people could be at their most effective. We too know that creative individuals must be allowed to pursue their ideas in an organisation that can direct their spark and effort in extremely testing circumstances. That is one of the threads that leads from World War One, through Bletchley Park, and to our own work today. Bletchley Park Magazine

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BREAKING THE CODES The team in Room 40 were desperate to break the German codes and gain knowledge of their plans. The capture of several code books made an immense difference. By the end of 1914, Room 40 had gained possession of three, including the Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine (SKM) captured from the SMS Magdeburg (a copy of which is on display in the exhibition). This and other code books were subject to additional reciphering and the keys changed infrequently. In the case of the SKM, they were not altered for several months and orders to do so were announced by wireless, in some instances using the old key. All these factors bought valuable time for Room 40 – though by the end of the war, keys were changing every 24 hours. Also on display is Frank Birch’s own working copy of the Allgemeines Funkspruchbuch (AFB) code book, complete with his scribbles and notes and a record of which U-boats had been sunk. Birch began his career as an

THE ARMY GAME historian at Cambridge, but from 1916 was working on codebreaking. The AFB was originally created for warships and merchant ships, but later used by Zeppelins (this copy was captured from an airship), and included codes for identifying individual vessels and U-boats – a useful tool in codebreaking, but first you had to solve the key to make use of the information. Room 40 and MI1(b) worked together at the beginning and end of the war, eventually amalgamating to form the GC&CS in November 1919. This in turn moved to Bletchley Park under Alastair Denniston at the beginning of World War Two to continue the essential codebreaking work that took place here. The knowledge and experience that came out of World War One was crucial.

‘Birch began his career as an historian at Cambridge, but from 1916 was working on codebreaking’ 24

The British military had come into the war relatively blind when it came to codebreaking, although the Army had slightly more experience, gained during the Boer War. Its codebreaking department, discreetly named MI1(b), hasn’t been much written about, so it’s good to have an opportunity to tell this story. The Admiralty appointed official historians (including Frank Birch and William J. Clarke) to preserve and catalogue records of their work after the war, but this didn’t happen in the Army. We do, however, have Hay’s ‘farewell book’. An album marking his departure in 1919 (MI1(b)’s work continued through the Paris Peace Conference), it includes photos of his colleagues, poems, jokes and quirky anecdotes. There are all sorts of affectionate contributions, some of them quite elaborate. Someone has written the story of MI1(b) as if it had taken place in ancient Egypt, which is illustrated by a photograph of Hay wearing an Army uniform with ancient Egyptian clothing. The book demonstrates the team spirit and collaborative effort of the department’s work – and ends, rather poignantly, with a picture of Hay’s empty chair. Sarah Ralph is the WWI Exhibition Research Co-ordinator at Bletchley Park. She was speaking to David Jays

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Image courtesy of University of Aberdeen, Papers of Malcolm Vivian Hay of Seaton. MS 2788 2/17.

An illustration and accompanying story from Major Hay’s ‘farewell book’ imagines the story of MI1(b) taking place in ancient Egypt

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ALICE’S ADVENTURES Curiouser and curiouser… Rachel Potts recounts the fascinating tale of how two intellectuals working in the codebreaking hothouse of Room 40 at the Admiralty in World War One produced a parody starring their colleagues, based on the Alice in Wonderland stories. Alice in ID25 remained private after the war. Now it can be revealed – and Lewis Carroll would have been proud

Opposite: Image courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston, DENN 3/2 and DENN 3/ 3. Copyright unknown.

IN SEC R E T I N T E L L IG E N C E LAND

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THERE WERE NO CRYPTOGRAPHERS The genesis of Bletchley Park might be traced to the first days of a previous war. In early August 1914 the distinguished Director of Naval Education, Sir Alfred Ewing, a well turned-out Scotsman, engineer and physicist, was rifling through the British Museum library for old code books. In addition to setting up listening stations, he had been tasked with decrypting the sudden stream of intercepted enemy messages. This work was unprecedented. A German teacher, Alastair Denniston, was among a first handful of linguists Ewing hastily assembled in his Admiralty office. Denniston later ran interwar signals intelligence, and Bletchley Park, but wrote at that time: ‘Cryptographers did not exist, so far as one knew.’ By October 1914 they occupied Room 40 and would take over more offices, becoming ID25 in 1917. The Navy Intelligence Division section 25 collaborated, fractiously, with an army equivalent office, MI1(b), but its original name stuck. Room 40’s achievements were considerable. Its cracking of the Zimmermann telegram in 1917, a German call for a Mexican alliance in return for aid to invade Arizona and Texas, tipped the US into joining the European war.

Then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill would tell Neville Chamberlain, at that time a cabinet minister, in 1924: ‘[I] attach more importance to [enemy decrypts]… than to any other source of knowledge at the disposal of the state.’ He also recorded: ‘There can be few purely mental experiences more charged with cold excitement than to follow… the phases of a great naval action from the silent rooms of the Admiralty.’ A disparate crew manned these silent rooms. Language and history scholars with ‘ivory tower’ focus joined, as did secretaries, translators and men from publishing, banking, law and literature. Even a fashion designer numbered among them, as did Lords: without an MI5 to vet recruits, social circles had to do instead. Under intense pressure, Denniston recalled: ‘Work was complicated by the crowd, the need for secrecy and the equal need for charwomen.’ Marked ‘no admittance’, the rooms weren’t cleaned once between 1914 and 1918.

Nevertheless, the Head of Room 40 (from 1917) Captain William James remembered ‘an atmosphere vibrating with excitement, expectation, urgency, friendship and high spirits’. Ewing’s memoir notes ‘light-hearted enjoyment of any comedy that came along, as it often did’. Two Room 40 intellectuals, classicist Dilly Knox and historian Frank Birch, had been great friends at Cambridge, and tuned into this mood. A far from naval figure partial to working in the bath, the absent-minded Knox was a dazzling cryptographer and undertook key work on Enigma in the 1940s. Less is known about Birch, who also served at Bletchley Park, except that he was great company and later played a popular Widow Twankey in London. Together they provided evidence of Room 40’s hothouse camaraderie, producing a larky parody set after the management shake-up of 1917 and based on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which is 150 years old this year. Birch wrote the text, Knox the verse.

‘[I] attach more importance to [enemy decrypts]… than to any other source of knowledge at the disposal of the state’

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The Admiralty Building in London, home of Room 40

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Alice in ID25 was performed with music in 1918 to an exclusive staff group after the war had ended. Roughly 100 illustrated copies were printed and given out. Room 40 staff star as Carroll’s characters alongside some new ‘creatures’. It’s sharp stuff: Alice descends a pneumatic tube into a basket where she is filed – as if an intercept arriving at the unit. (She is classed ‘N.S.L.’, a dreaded category Denniston called ‘a living thing’ that inspired trembling sweats. It meant unknown: ‘neither sent nor logged’.) Carroll’s mad tea-party is a key-party, keys being the ‘ways in’ to German codes that changed daily from 1916 onwards.

Room 40 must have seemed an apt Wonderland, where staff slept, bathed and pored over ‘nonsense’. Chaos reigns in the parody. One creature must lose things, otherwise ‘there’d be no use having people to find them, and a lot of people would be thrown out of work’. A message arrives and is snatched by a mysterious ‘Waterflap’:

Perhaps staff were aching to do just that after four years in the Admiralty. Jibes about the ‘Waterflap’ might never be understood, but this does illustrate how intercepted messages helped to chart locations of enemy signals and fleets. Alice in ID25, and its sensitive information, remained strictly private for the decades that followed.

‘It’s a new cypher! The Fleet’s out!’ It rushed to a table on which a chart was pinned, seized hold of all the flags and plunked them into the middle of the chart. ‘Send for Captain James’ it yelled, as it upset the tables and knocked the other creatures on to the floor. ‘Send for the DIND. Send for the King! Fire! Fire! Fire!! Then it rushed to the window, threw it open and flung all the typewriters into the yard.’

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One of the illustrations provided for the Alice in ID25 programme by G.P. Mackeson

THE CARROLL CONNECTION Nearly a century later some jokes are salvageable. In 1977 Room 40 Veteran Walter Bruford helped to ‘decode’ Alice in ID25 for the author and niece of Dilly, Penelope Fitzgerald, for her memoir The Knox Brothers. Then in 2007 brilliant Bletchley Park Codebreaker Mavis Batey, who had worked closely with Knox in World War Two, enlisted Lewis Carroll expert Edward Wakeling to help to publish Alice in ID25. She had befriended Wakeling, a mathematician with an interest in logic, after speaking to the Lewis Carroll Society in 1979, Carroll being among her many interests. Batey was passionate to ensure Knox wasn’t forgotten. Her 2011 book Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas furthered this cause. Batey had Knox’s copy of Alice in ID25 through her continued friendship with his family, and Denniston’s copy in the Churchill Archives helped to fill in some missing parts. Wakeling contributed notes on the Carrollian context and Mavis an erudite essay on the characters and codebreaking it reveals. They both enjoyed its ‘chopped logic’, says Wakeling, the parody’s most impressively Carrollian trait. Alice is confused about the whereabouts of the Directional room. ‘Silly girl,’ she is told, ‘why, it’s called the Directional room because it’s in that direction.’ The two authors ‘knew their Carroll’, and could mimic his deceptively clever wordplay.

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A CODEBREAKER’S PARODY

Opposite: Image courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston, DENN 3/2 and DENN 3/ 3. Copyright unknown.

Alice would have been well known to the Codebreakers in 1919. She was never out of print, and from 1886 onwards a theatrical version was a near annual family fixture on the UK stage. But Knox had been a big Carroll fan since youth. His personification as the Dodo was also Carroll’s, and he later penned a Bletchley Park Jabberwocky (‘Come to the STORE, my BOMBE-ISH boy…’). The real man behind the pen name of Lewis Carroll, Charles Dodgson, was an Oxford mathematics lecturer. He in fact devised a number of ciphers, one earmarked for the new telegraph cables being laid under the oceans, as he recognised their need for security. His other inventions included a spiked anklet designed to ward off sharks – which, strangely, did not catch on. Dodgson was ‘an ideas man’, says Wakeling, as were Knox and Birch: ‘If you’re going to be a cryptographer, you can’t be put off by the first problem you hit.’

‘You’re only a lot of common, callous, crooked, cranky, crotchety, cattish carping, critical, cracked, cross, contemptible, cantankerous creatures.’ So says Alice at the end of her adventures in the Admiralty. There were, and continue to be, many Alice parodies. Wakeling has shelves full. Adolf in Blunderland was a hit in the 1940s. The year 1902 saw in The Westminster Alice, though he calls this ‘stodgy’ with political detail. Alice in ID25, he argues, despite its codebreaking technicalities, is not only very witty, but ‘more to do with the characters of people’, and so much more appealing.

Its coda reads ‘in memory of our races down the corridors of the war office’. Their singularly stressful work saved lives, and many World War One Codebreakers died without acknowledgment. As more comes to light about them, these peculiarly private documents offer a picture not only of their work but also their intellects, humour and friendships, which would certainly be lost otherwise, and help us to understand the very human endeavour that was wartime intelligence.

An intimate farewell book created for MI1(b) head Major Hay features photos, sketches, messages in code and relevant literary excerpts, including this from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Alice: ‘I don’t believe there’s an atom of meaning in it.’ ‘If there’s no meaning in it,’ said the King, ‘that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn’t try to find any. And yet, I don’t know… I seem to see some meaning in them, after all…’

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THE PLAYERS

THE DODO Alfred Dillwyn ‘Dilly’ Knox, CMG, 1884–1943 Dilly Knox is an hilarious Dodo in Alice in ID25, which riffs on his tiny office and famous baths (sometimes disturbed by his secretary and future wife, Olive Roddam). A gangly figure, he is given ‘a face like a pang of hunger’ and accused of swallowing a missing bed. At Bletchley Park, Mavis Batey remembers Knox stuffing a sandwich into his pipe rather than tobacco – clearly an established quirk:

‘Where are my spectacles?’ and [the Dodo] glared angrily at the Secretary. ‘I expect they are in that,’ jerked the Secretary, pointing to the tobaccopouch on the table. ‘Of course, of course,’ cried the Dodo foolishly. He opened the pouch and there, sure enough, were the spectacles. ‘A little idea of mine,’ he smirked. ‘Rather ingenious, don’t you think? You see, by this means, when I find my spectacles I remember my tobacco…’ Son of the Bishop of Manchester, Knox was, like Birch, an old Etonian, and studied classics at Cambridge. Notable friends included Agatha Christie, John Maynard Keynes and E.M. Forster. His speciality was finding the sense in

ancient papyri fragments by divining their whole. The Dodo shows Alice his ‘three letter stuff’ – his work on the German navy’s flag codes, crucial in safeguarding Atlantic convoys.

A sketch of Dilly Knox by Gilbert Spencer RA. Knox would go on to be a key member of the World War Two Codebreakers at Bletchley Park

In 1919 he joined the new Government Code & Cypher School, and worked at Bletchley Park until his death in 1943, where his role in breaking the Enigma and Abwehr decrypts cannot be underestimated.

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FRANCIS LYALL (FRANK) BIRCH CMG, OBE, 1889–1956

‘He is recalled as Dilly Knox’s ‘jolliest, most amusing and mondain’ friend’

The Alice in ID25 co-author was an unorthodox dresser, a Cambridge history lecturer, an actor, a theatre producer – and a key British Codebreaker.

At the word Baltic all the creatures in the room, who had been fast asleep, suddenly put up their heads and howled in chorus: ‘We don’t do Baltic. We won’t do Baltic. We never have done Baltic. It’s a tradition.’ Whereupon they dropped their heads upon their arms and went to sleep again.

Birch served with the Navy before joining Room 40 in 1916, where his strong suit was interpreting decrypts. He is recalled as Dilly Knox’s ‘jolliest, most amusing and mondain’ friend, and roomed with him at Edith Grove, a bohemian Chelsea community populated by musicians, where he threw parties.

He was awarded an OBE in 1919. Penelope Fitzgerald casts him as ‘a rather dull historian, an acceptable drinking companion, a mysterious private personality, a brilliant talker and a born actor’. His history of Room 40, written with William F. Clarke, is called ‘distinctly obscure’.

Though not a player in Alice in ID25, one of his bugbears is – Birch argued attention be paid to Baltic messages, to no avail, until late in the war:

After forays into show business, Birch returned to intelligence and headed the Naval Section at Bletchley Park from 1939 onwards, gaining a CMG in 1945.

Below left: Frank Birch (left) pictured with a friend

Image courtesy StudioCanal

Below right: Frank Birch in the 1953 film Will Any Gentleman...? with Sid James

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THE LITTLE MAN Alastair Denniston, CMG, CBE, RNVR, 1881–1961 Commander Denniston joined Room 40 in summer 1914 and worked in signals intelligence for the next 30 years. He is the Little Man in Alice in ID25, and was in real life short – though his achievements were not. Trilingual and an exceptional scholar, Denniston had played hockey for Scotland in the 1908 Olympics. He was recruited to Room 40 from the Royal Naval College at Osborne, where he was teaching German, and helped across all aspects of breaking and interpreting intercepts. He was kept on to head the new Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) in 1919. That he did so ensured valuable continuity in signals intelligence into the 1930s and 1940s.

‘Trilingual and an exceptional scholar, Denniston had played hockey for Scotland in the 1908 Olympics’ Alastair Denniston became head of GC&CS in 1919

Foretelling his achievement, the creatures sing: … Denniston will never Desert his solitary post:He will go on for ever! His perilous diplomatic trips across the Atlantic in the 1940s paved the way for crucial collaboration with the US, but he didn’t take to the jostling attendant with high rank. It was said that at Bletchley Park ‘he disliked the infighting more than he feared the Luftwaffe’. Denniston’s god-daughter remembers a ‘genuine, quiet, lovable person’. He had swapped birthdays with his son, who was born on Christmas day, so that the boy might enjoy his childhood birthdays. Robin Denniston wrote: ‘My father’s death… at the age of 79 was marked by no obituaries anywhere.’

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THE DORMOUSE Nigel de Grey, CMG, OBE, 1886–1951 A quiet, slight man, de Grey became Birch’s dormouse in Alice in ID25. Another old Etonian and a linguist recruited from the publisher Heinemann, he had ‘almost immediately shown a remarkable flair’ for cryptanalysis, wrote Hall, soon discerning the gist of nearly all Germany’s diplomatic dispatches.

LADY MOUSE AND OTHERS There were some 20 women in Room 40 by 1916. Many were skilled linguists and had naval or society connections, earning the collective nickname ‘Blinker’s Beauty Chorus’. They included Joan Harvey, daughter of the Secretary of the Bank of England (among the Room 40 women also to work at Bletchley Park) and soap heiress Violet Hudson. Clarke also mentions ‘the excellent Miss Tribe’, who continued as secretary for the intelligence services post-war. As Lady Mouse in Alice in ID25, she spends all day forging signatures:

After his achievements in World War One, Nigel De Grey returned to cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park

His seismic achievement was reconstructing the Zimmermann telegram, with the help of colleagues Knox and Reverend William Montgomery, for which he was awarded an OBE. Signalling his coup, the dormouse has a coronet and is slightly larger the second time Alice sees him. De Grey worked at Bletchley Park, and in 1941 provided Churchill with one of the first reports of genocide in Germany.

‘And why do you underline everything like that?’ Alice went on, peeping over her shoulder. ‘One must draw the line somewhere,’ the Mouse replied with dignity. Bletchley Park Magazine

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THE DIND

Opposite: Image courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston, DENN 3/2 and DENN 3/ 3. Copyright unknown.

Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall, KCMG, CB, RN, 1870–1943 The highly decorated ‘Blinker’ Hall was Director of Naval Intelligence in 1914, with ‘energy, enthusiasm and organising ability’.

Birch parodies Hall’s wealthy assistants, Lord Herschell and a Claud Serocold, as fawning yes men, his ‘Right and Left Bank’.

Once called ‘half Machiavelli and half schoolboy’, Hall recruited shrewdly. He was something of a legend, remembered for his ‘striking domed head and aquiline nose, brisk way of entering the room and sparkling eyes, full of humour, with a certain nervous twitch which gave him his nickname’.

‘Banks!’ Ejaculated Alice. ‘Yes, – he’s always between them you know – like a river.’ ‘Oh, I see. I thought you meant money banks.’ ‘I might have,’ vaguely muttered the Little Man…

Being the boss, he is Alice in ID25’s natural Queen of Hearts, and is drawn as a certain bird (DIND was short for dindon, which means turkey in French, and derived from his title ‘DNI’).

Nigel de Grey brought Hall the Zimmermann telegram in 1917. Hall later wrote: ‘I do not remember a time when I was more excited.’

William ‘Blinker’ Hall was the Director of Naval Intelligence

‘He was something of a legend, remembered for his ‘striking domed head and aquiline nose...’

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THE WHITE RABBIT Sir Frank Ezra Adcock, OBE, FBA, 1886–1968

Lady Sybil Hambro, 1872–1942 Behind a door marked ‘BIG BEN’S DEN’, Alice finds ‘a huge creature… conducting an orchestra of typewriters’. Cast in a role reminiscent of the alarming Duchess in Alice in Wonderland, Lady Hambro was the imposing head of Room 40’s secretarial section. ‘Why do they call her that?’ Alice whispered while Big Ben was pouring out the tea. ‘Because she’s so striking, of course,’ replied the Dodo admiringly. ‘Don’t you think she is?’ Married to a one-time MP and banker, according to Clarke she was ‘as efficient as her husband must have been in the City. She startled [Commander] Hope at one of our annual dinners by smoking a very large cigar’.

Lady Hambro at Ladies Day, The Gold Cup, Ascot, in the Daily Mirror, 21 June 1923 38

Described as ‘a small round man with twinkling eyes behind thick glasses’, he is the famously anxious character: ‘Dear me, dear me,’ Alice heard him say as he passed her, ‘it’s past ten. I shall be late for the DIND. I must be there when he comes round. I always am.’ Adcock worked as a cryptographer during both World Wars and was knighted in 1954.

Opposite: Image courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston, DENN 3/2 and DENN 3/ 3. Copyright unknown.

BIG BEN

Mirrorpix

Adcock was an historian and later a professor at King’s College, Cambridge.

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Shaun Armstrong ÂŠ www.mubsta.com

Michael Smith discusses his new book with Bletchley Park Veterans (left to right) Betty Webb, Marigold Freeman-Attwood, Margeret Mortimer and Jean Tocher

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THE FORGOTTEN WOMEN – REMEMBERED

Simon Arthur talks to the authors of two books that turn the long-overdue spotlight on the silent majority at Bletchley Park who had a major impact on World War Two

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‘Of the 9,000 or so people working at Bletchley Park at the height of World War Two, approximately twothirds were women’

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Opposite: Bletchley Park Veterans and members of the press at an event for The Debs of Bletchley Park Above: Veteran Lady Marion Body at the event

‘There are still far too many people out there who believe that Alan Turing was the leading Codebreaker at Bletchley Park, almost alone in his ability,’ says author and Bletchley Park expert Michael Smith, ‘they don’t know enough about the women and the jobs they did.’ Broadcaster, presenter and historian Tessa Dunlop agrees: ‘Bletchley Park was a great example of a collective effort. Women were the majority players in that collective effort,’ a fact she suggests, ‘that has been overlooked in the modern-day, male narrative’. Of the 9,000 or so people working at Bletchley Park at the height of World War Two, approximately two-thirds were women, and yet, give or take a few exceptions (most recently Keira Knightley’s portrayal of cryptanalyst Joan Clarke), they have been comparatively neglected in the media around Bletchley Park’s history. Michael Smith’s new book The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories and Tessa Dunlop’s The Bletchley Girls aim to address this omission.

‘The women of Bletchley Park are regarded as being the tiny cogs in a much larger machine,’ says Smith, when in fact ‘everything they did had some kind of impact on the war’. He gives numerous examples of that impact, paying particular attention to the contribution Dilly Knox’s all-female workforce (‘Dilly’s girls’) made in the British victory at Cape Matapan in 1941 and their pivotal role in the success of the D-Day landings. Codebreakers Margaret Rock and Mavis Batey (née Lever) were especially important to Knox. He was to praise them after Matapan with his characteristic wit, stating: ‘Give me a Rock and a Lever and I can move the universe.’

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‘Bletchley Park’s remarkable female Veterans are enjoying their place in the sun, delivering lectures, meeting royalty and making television appearances’ The books by Dunlop and Smith both explore the importance of Bletchley Park’s female workforce

Similarly, through a range of candid, touching and often comical interviews with Veterans, Dunlop’s The Bletchley Girls highlights the remarkable achievements of many of Bletchley Park’s women, but at the same time doesn’t shy away from depicting the less glamorous aspects of life there. ‘By virtue of the fact that those still left alive had to be very young when they were working at the park,’ she says, ‘that meant they were doing more simple jobs.’ But that in itself, suggests Dunlop, makes the stories even richer, even more interesting.

Opposite: Betty Webb (top), Marigold Freeman-Attwood and Margaret Mortimer (below) were among the Veterans to reunite at the event celebrating The Debs of Bletchley Park

Both give precedence to the voice of the Veterans, a conscious choice on Smith’s part to make this history more accessible to readers. ‘If I let the female Veterans tell their own stories, allowing them to speak as often as possible,’ he explains, ‘then the reader would connect with them.’ It also provides room for plenty of anecdotes, of which Smith’s favourite concerns Marigold Freeman-Attwood, a Wren who worked on Colossus. ‘When she returned to Bletchley Park some years ago for a visit,’ relays Smith, the team working on the rebuild of the computer ‘seized on Marigold because she might be able to help them with a thorny problem. There was a small cavity in Colossus and they couldn’t work out what it was for. “Oh, that was where we kept our make-up,” replied Marigold.’

Both Smith and Dunlop track the Veterans’ lives after Bletchley Park and the inevitable influences that such an extraordinary experience had on them. Somewhat expectedly, the high levels of secrecy that still had to be maintained following the end of World War Two had their consequences. ‘Many of the wartime marriages broke up very quickly,’ says Smith, and job-hunting became difficult with such huge holes in their CVs. But now that the secret is out, many of Bletchley Park’s remarkable female Veterans are enjoying their place in the sun, delivering lectures, meeting royalty and making television appearances. When asked by Dunlop whether her work at Bletchley Park was the best experience of her life, Veteran Charlotte Webb exclaims: ‘Oh no… I am having the best time of my life right now.’ And rightly so.

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VISITOR INFORMATION

WINTER OPENING (1 November to 28 February) From 9.30am to 4.00pm. SUMMER OPENING (1 March to 31 October) From 9.30am to 5.00pm. Please note the gates will open at the times stated above and limited, free parking is available on-site. Please be aware that a visit to Bletchley Park involves both indoor and outdoor activities. Please wear outdoor clothing and footwear to ensure a safe and enjoyable visit. Bletchley Park has full disabled access throughout the site. A limited number of wheelchairs are available for visitors to use while on-site and pre-booking is essential, call + 44 (0) 1908 640404. Please note: although wheelchairs are made available for visitors to use, we cannot provide wheelchair assistants/pushers. Admission price entitles you to an Annual Season Ticket, which is valid for as many visits as you would like during the 12 month period from the time of your first visit. Your admission fee includes complimentary use of the Multimedia Guide.

ADULTS £16.75 CONCESSIONS (Over 60s and students with valid ID) £14.75 CHILDREN 12 TO 16 £10.00 CHILDREN UNDER 12 (With friends and family only. Groups of children with clubs, such as Cub Scouts, should contact us in advance.) Free FAMILY TICKET (Two adults + two children aged 12 to 16) £38.50 Please note that the information above does not apply to Group Visitors. We offer discounts for groups of 12 or more people. Also available for visitors to Bletchley Park, but operating independently of the Bletchley Park Trust, is the The National Museum of Computing - An independent museum tracing the development of the computer from Colossus to the modern-day and housing a working replica of Colossus. This museum is located on the Bletchley Park site and charges its own admission fees.

OPENING TIMES Bletchley Park is open to visitors daily except 24, 25, 26 December and 1 January.

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MEMBERSHIP EVENTS Join the Friends of Bletchley Park and be the first to see new exhibitions and receive priority booking for all other events. To join, visit www.bletcheypark.org.uk/ friends, call +44 (0)1908 272652, or email friends@bletchleypark.org.uk

BLETCHLEY PARK PRESENTS... As part of the benefits of membership, Friends receive two weeks priority booking for this popular lecture series held at Bletchley Park each month. Tickets are £20 per person for each lecture. Tickets are still available for the spring events in May, June and July from the Bletchley Park shop on telephone 01908 272684. FORTHCOMING LECTURES THIS SPRING SEASON

EXHIBITION PRIVATE VIEWS COMING SOON… WORLD WAR ONE – THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK Thursday 4 June 2015 (6–8pm) A new major exhibition with a fresh perspective on the story of World War One, revealing the history of the British Intelligence Service to commemorate the 100th anniversary events around the country. A private view for Friends of Bletchley Park in Block C with wine and refreshments served and a talk by the Exhibition Research Co-ordinator, Sarah Ralph. Sarah will reveal the fascinating research and some exciting finds (such as the original Room 40 charter) which give a human perspective to the World War One signals intelligence story. RSVP to friends@bletchleypark.org.uk to reserve your place.

17 May Jerry White Talking on his new book Zeppelin Nights, Jerry White looks at the Zeppelin air raids in World War One. 21 June Taylor Downing Taylor Downing will be talking about his new book Secret Warriors: Key Scientists, Code Breakers and Propagandists of the Great War. 19 July Sinclair McKay Sinclair McKay will talk about RAF Fighter Command to tie in with the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Priority booking for autumn events opens on 1 May: 20 September Tessa Dunlop Tessa Dunlop will speak about her new book The Bletchley Girls, telling the stories of 15 extraordinary women from diverse backgrounds (Jewish girls, debutantes, factory workers and foreigners) who were selected to work in Britain’s most secret wartime organisation, Bletchley Park. Friends will be notified of further dates as they are confirmed through the e-newsletter with priority booking.

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MY BLETCHLEY SINCLAIR MCKAY My scant early knowledge of Bletchley Park had seeped osmotically through popular culture. There was Robert Harris’s terrific best-seller Enigma, Ian McEwan’s TV play The Imitation Game and that terrible Hollywood film U-571, in which the Americans grabbed all the credit, plus the odd news story about Enigma (such as the stolen machine being sent to Jeremy Paxman). Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the dazzling complexity, variety, colour and sheer off-the-wall humanity of Bletchley Park’s real story.

The author Sinclair McKay has written numerous books about Bletchley Park, including The Secret Life of Bletchley Park and The Lost World of Bletchley Park. Here he reveals how he became interested in its history, what drove him to research and write about it, and the stories of love and romance that he uncovered along the way.

I first began to research and write about Bletchley Park following a discussion with my publishers. Much had been written about the site, celebrating its intellectual and technical feats, but I was slightly hazy about who these Codebreakers and linguists were: how they had been recruited; what day-to-day life was like for them; how they coped with the pressure; and even what happened when there were outbreaks of romance. The Bletchley Park Trust instantly put me in touch with a wide array of Veterans. Thus began the best job of my life.

When I first visited Bletchley Park I was struck by an electric sense of awe: strolling from the railway station, through the sentry hut gate, and all the while thinking of Codebreakers some 70 years back walking up and down these same paths between the huts, very often in the pitch dark, moving with incredibly serious purpose and focus through this secret estate and leaving behind all the steam train whistles of the ordinary world outside the perimeter fence.

I hadn’t quite anticipated the sheer youthfulness of Bletchley Park, the way that it fizzed with the vitality of all those undergraduates and eager Wrens. I was particularly surprised to learn about the prevalence of romance. The codebreaking miracles performed by Turing, Knox and Welchman were one thing, but Oliver Lawn and Sheila MacKenzie falling in love while Highland dancing on the lawn outside the house was another. Given the strict

compartmentalisation of the huts, I had somehow imagined the Directorate would hate interdepartmental relationships, and would try to thwart them. But no one tried to thwart Keith Batey and Mavis Lever as they took to sitting side by side in the canteen. Even in the nation’s most secret establishment, love found a way. It is beyond important that the stories of those who worked there are remembered. After so many decades in the shadows, their reminiscences – from the Codebreakers to the file-card indexers to the young messengers – should be celebrated at top volume. For generations of youngsters to come, these accounts of brain-knotting ingenuity, madcap eccentricity and, of course, the dawn of the computer age should serve as a constant inspiration. That is why Bletchley Park’s recognition in modern-day culture is very positive. Recently, there was a furious essay in The New York Review of Books about the film The Imitation Game, complaining of its inaccuracies. Yet on the other side of this argument, that film, which reached millions, will have stimulated an appetite to learn more about Bletchley Park’s real history. And hopefully some of those millions will be visiting the gloriously restored site and absorbing the atmosphere of a place where there were world-changing achievements so wild and brilliant that not even the big screen can contain them.

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ROCK128 Bletchley Imitation Game DVD Mag Advert 2.pdf

26/03/2015

10:40 am

ROCK132 DEBS Ad 1.pdf

THE IMITATION GAME based on Andrew Hodges' book, Alan Turing: The Enigma

26/03/2015

10:35 am

Get your copy of The Imitation Game DVD from the Bletchley Park shop or online. Price: £15.99

Price: £20.00

www.bletchleypark.org.uk

CMY

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THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK

UNTOLD STORIES WORLD WAR ONE CODEBREAKING AND THE ROAD TO BLETCHLEY PARK

MEET THE CODEBREAKERS OF WORLD WAR ONE Opening to the public Friday 5 June 2015 Friends Private View 4 June 2015 (6-8pm) RSVP: friends@bletchleypark.org.uk

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Issue no. 4 Spring 2015

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