{"product_id":"9781845136833","title":"The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The WW11 Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women Who Worked There","description":"\u003cp\u003eBletchley 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut, 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?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSinclair 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePre-order the new book, Secret Listeners, by Sinclair McKay. Published on October 4, 2012.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBefore Bletchley Park could break the German war machine’s code, its daily military communications had to be monitored and recording by “the Listening Service” - the wartime department whose bases moved with every theatre of war: Cairo, Malta, Gibraltar, Iraq, Cyprus, as well as having listening stations along the eastern coast of Britain to intercept radio traffic in the European theatre. This is the story of the - usually very young - men and women sent out to farflung outposts to listen in for Bletchley Park, an oral history of exotic locations and ordinary lives turned upside down by a sudden remote posting - the heady nightlife in Cairo, filing cabinets full of snakes in North Africa, and flights out to Delhi by luxurious flying boat.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Aurum Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47135932580080,"sku":"9781845136833","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781845136833_p0.jpg?v=1763743284","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781845136833","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}