Book description
A melting pot of Oxbridge dons, maverick oddballs and more regular
citizens worked night and day at Station X, as Bletchley Park was
known, to derive intelligence information from German coded messages.
Bear in mind that an Enigma machine had a possible 159 million million
million different settings and the magnitude of the challenge becomes
apparent. That they succeeded, despite military scepticism, supplying
information that led to the sinking of the Bismarck, Montgomery's
victory in North Africa and the D-Day landings, is testament to an
indomitable spirit that wrenched British intelligence into the modern
age, as the Second World War segued into the Cold War. Michael Smith
constructs his absorbing narrative around the reminiscences of those
who worked and played at Bletchley Park, and their stories add a very
human colour to their cerebral activity. The code breakers of Station
X did not win the war but they undoubtedly shortened it, and the lives
saved on both sides stand as their greatest achievement.
Michael Smith is a former military intelligence officer and
award-winning journalist and author. He is the bestselling author of
many books, including most recently, Six: A history of Britain's
secret intelligence services.
