March 2021 In our last Oral History Special we brought you the first part of a 2017 interview with former WREN, Mary Sherrard. From 1942 until the end of the war, Mary served at Bletchley Park and then at the Eastcote Bombe Outstation. This helped shaped the rest of her life because it was at Eastcote where she met her future husband John. After originally servicing Spitfires in 1940, an interview at the Foreign Office sent John to Eastcote and Stanmore to maintain Mary’s Bombe machines. By the ...
Mar 19, 2021•53 min
March 2021 In March 1946, as an ‘Iron Curtain’ was descending across Europe, in post-war London a document was signed that to this day is the basis of the most important and longest intelligence relationship that the UK has. But that Special Relationship with the USA didn’t suddenly begin 75 years ago; it was the culmination of five years of wartime collaboration. In this episode Podcast Producer, Mark Cotton, and our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon, go back to February 1941 and look at each...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 24 min
February 2021 To keep you going during the lockdown, the podcast team will be bringing you a new episode every two weeks. Last year we featured short clips from dozens of our Veterans telling us what they did on VE Day & VJ Day. Now in these Oral History Specials we can bring you the longer versions of those interviews, allowing our Veterans to tell their full story, in their own voices and in their own way. Vital to us capturing these interview are a team of brilliant volunteers who visit o...
Feb 22, 2021•51 min
February 2021 As we did last year we have decided to release extra content again during the current lockdown and so for at least the next couple of months we will be bringing you a new show every two weeks. These will be a mixture of Oral History Specials and also our regular content as and when COVID restrictions allow us. Last year we featured short clips from dozens of our Veterans telling us what they did on VE Day & VJ Day. Now in these Oral History Specials we can bring you the longer ...
Feb 08, 2021•39 min
January 2021 As we release this episode Bletchley Park Museum is currently closed as the UK is in a national lockdown to help contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Our staff and volunteers like so many around the world are in lockdown, self-isolation or working remotely from home. Unfortunately it means the promised second part of our Q&A’s from our listeners is on-hold for now, but once we are safe to do so we will bring you that show. As we did last year during the first lockdown w...
Jan 25, 2021•57 min
December 2020 At the end of each year we like to focus on the important work that our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team of staff and volunteers carry out. As with so many around the world, COVID-19 has had a huge effect on the work of Jonathan’s team in 2020. In this episode we catch-up with Jonathan for an update on the Oral History Project and he shares four more highlights from our archive of 550 interviews. Gwen Adsley was a civilian working in the Communications Section from ...
Dec 22, 2020•1 hr 8 min
November 2020 For the first time since January 2020 the podcast team were able to be physically in the same room together, even if socially distanced. So to mark this return we decided to ask our listeners on social media for their questions about Bletchley Park. In this, the first of these shows, Exhibitions Manager Erica Munro, Research Historian Dr David Kenyon, Research Officer Dr Thomas Cheetham and podcast producer Mark Cotton, will hopefully answer those questions and maybe do a bit of my...
Dec 07, 2020•1 hr 3 min
October 2020 For over 8 years the podcast has been privileged to receive help and support from the modern day version of the wartime Government Code and Cypher School, GCHQ, both as an organisation and from their Departmental Historian. Previous listeners will know that GCHQ has a new Historian and in Podcast Episode 98, we had the honour of being able to exclusively reveal his identity when we met him at the GCHQ Centenary celebrations at the National Memorial Arboretum in November 2019. We pro...
Oct 29, 2020•32 min
September 2020 This is the last of three special episodes to mark what would have been our Annual Veterans Reunion. It was due to COVID-19 restrictions and with huge regret that Bletchley Park Trust had to take the difficult decision not to hold this year’s reunion on-site. But here at the podcast we can still celebrate our Veterans with these special episodes. At a reunion we like to capture as many Veterans stories as we can, but we also always remember that it is their special day and we try ...
Sep 30, 2020•1 hr 24 min
September 2020 As we explained in the last show, due to COVID-19 restrictions and with huge regret, Bletchley Park Trust had to take the difficult decision not to host our Annual Veterans Reunion onsite this year. To continue to mark what would have been this year’s reunion, this is the second of three special episodes we will be bringing you this month, to still pay tribute to our Veterans. Reunion is always the busiest day of the year for the podcast, catching up with old friends & rushing...
Sep 18, 2020•1 hr 11 min
September 2020 Each year, to mark the arrival of the Codebreakers to their war station in 1939, we hold our Veterans Reunion. This is the highlight of our calendar year, and a really special occasion for all involved. Veterans can meet up with friends old and new and share stories of their vital and once top-secret wartime work. These events have taken on even more meaning in the past few years, for the Veterans, their families, and all those who work for Bletchley Park Trust today. It is with h...
Sep 06, 2020•1 hr 1 min
August 2020 Nearly 3 months after VE Day, the war against Japan still continued. Its end would be drawn out over 6 weeks between the Potsdam Declaration in July and the final signing of the surrender on-board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September the 2nd. During those weeks the world saw the use of a new weapon, the atom bomb and both Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be totally destroyed before World War Two would finally come to an end. To commemorate VJ Day we present this special It Happened...
Aug 15, 2020•1 hr 4 min
July 2020 As COVID-19 struck we decided to start releasing these extra episodes to give you our listeners something extra each week while you were in lockdown. We are glad we could share so many previously unheard recordings that we just hadn’t been able to before and hopefully these shows have helped you through these extraordinary times, if even in a small way. Over the next few episodes we shall start to return to our more normal podcast episodes and eventually our It Happen Here shows too. I...
Jul 31, 2020•35 min
July 2020 Bletchley Park is an independent charity and so we rely on the ticket sales of our visitors for 95% of our operating costs, but another way to support the museum is to become a Friend of Bletchley Park. As a friend of Bletchley Park you not only get our normal free unlimited year-round access to our heritage site and museum, but a range of other benefits including exclusive events, previews and discounts … all while knowing you are helping us to keep telling the story of the vital war ...
Jul 17, 2020•52 min
July 2020 In this episode we are staying with Dermot Turing & his wider family. First we go back to a very cold day in March 2015 when more than twenty members of Alan Turing’s family gathered at Bletchley Park to pay tribute to their famous ancestor. The Imitation Game had been released only a few months earlier, so to have so many Turing’s in one place, at the same time, meant the worlds press turned up too & so the perfect opportunity for Dermot to launch the fundraising campaign for ...
Jul 03, 2020•1 hr 9 min
June 2020 This week we return for the second and final time to the 2018 launch of Dermot Turing’s book, X, Y and Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken. It’s a story of international cooperation, spanning many years and for the first time tells of how the French, British and Polish secret services came together to unravel the secrets of the Enigma machine. At the launch Dermot was joined by Nathalie Genet-Rouffiac, the Curator of Heritage for the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and GCHQ ...
Jun 19, 2020•49 min
June 2020 The breaking of the German Enigma machine wasn’t just down to the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park and it didn’t start with the outbreak of World War Two. It’s a story of international cooperation, spanning many years and who better to tell it than the nephew of Alan Turing. In this, the first of two episodes, we return to 2018 when Bletchley Park hosted representatives of the Polish Embassy in London and families of Polish codebreakers, for the launch of Dermot Turing’s book, X, Y and Z...
Jun 12, 2020•37 min
June 2020 This week we return for the last time to the Bill Tutte symposium that was held at Bletchley Park in 2017, the centenary of his birth. In this episode we bring you the closing address of the day given by our then Chairman, Sir John Scarlett. But before that we have the final speaker of the day, the BBC’s Security Correspondent, Gordon Corera, here for the first time in full. The work that Bill did at Bletchley Park would help lead to the creation of the cutting edge technology of the C...
Jun 05, 2020•43 min
May 2020 We return in this episode to the Bill Tutte symposium that was held at Bletchley Park in 2017, on the centenary of his birth. Again we bring you one of the many talks given that day, but for the first time in full. Bill Tutte’s breaking of the Lorenz machine led to the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park being able to read the messages being sent between Hitler, the German High Command and the Generals in the field. In his talk our Research Historian Dr David Kenyon, looked at why this was s...
May 29, 2020•34 min
May 2020 In this episode we stay with the attack on the Lorenz code that Bill Tutte played such an important part in, with a first-hand account. Captain Jerry Roberts worked with Bill Tutte in The Testery cracking, what they called Tunny, the German High Commands code, used by Hitler & his top Generals. Jerry tells us what it was like to work in The Testery, why breaking Tunny was so important to the ultimate Allied victory and of his 3 Heroes of Bletchley Park. Jerry’s was the last of a day...
May 22, 2020•41 min
May 2020 In this episode we again return to the Bill Tutte symposium that was held at Bletchley Park in 2017, on the centenary of his birth. As a member of the Bill Tutte Memorial Fund Claire Butterfield had by 2017 spent 4 years campaigning for more recognition for the little-known mathematical genius. For the first time we can bring you Claire’s entire talk that opened the day and in it she explores Bill’s entire life and work. Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2020 #BPark, #WW2, #BletchleyPark, #E...
May 15, 2020•31 min
May 2020 After more than 5 and a half years of fighting, 75 Years ago today the war in Europe officially finally came to an end. To commemorate the day we present this special It Happened Here episode. Using archive recordings and interviews with our Veterans from both our official Oral History Project and nearly 8 years of podcasts, we hope to take you back to the heady days of early May 1945. 20 of our Veterans will share their memories, both happy and sometimes poignant, of what VE Day and be...
May 08, 2020•59 min
May 2020 Since first marching into Poland on the 1st September 1939, the German army had conquered most of Europe. But the tide had turned and, as April 1945 began, they were caught between the Western Allies and the vast Red Army of the Soviet Union. The inevitable end was finally in sight, but not before multiple surrenders were signed. For the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park, after more than 5 and a half years, their work wasn’t over. Not only did they have to keep supplying vital intelligence...
May 01, 2020•1 hr 36 min
April 2020 Many of Bletchley Park’s senior early war staff had cut their codebreaking teeth during World War One. In 2015 we opened an exhibition called The Road to Bletchley Park which looked at the work of Room 40 and MI1B. So following on from our previous Intelligence Insight we will be sharing again some interviews with the families of these famous Codebreakers of both conflicts. Dillwyn ‘Dilly’ Knox started World War Two as GC&CS’s Chief Codebreaker but in World War One had been one of...
Apr 24, 2020•1 hr
April 2020 Over the years we have been very fortunate to welcome the families of some of our more famous Codebreakers for a visit to Bletchley Park. The families always have such an immense pride in their ancestors and the work they did for GC&CS and it’s always an honour for the podcast to sit down with them for our listeners. Following on from our last podcast, Invasion Norway, where we looked at the vital work Harry Hinsley carried out in the Naval Section, we go back to 2017 when two of ...
Apr 17, 2020•57 min
April 2020 In early 1940, as winter turned to spring, the world waited for the ‘Phony war’ to end with the expected German attack in the west. But the leaders of both Allied and Axis forces were looking in another direction, to the north, to the snow and the steel, to Scandinavia. Meanwhile in a wooden hut at Bletchley Park, recent recruit Harry Hinsley was certain a German fleet was preparing to set sail, but how could he, a 21-year-old civilian in a highly secret department, persuade the Admir...
Apr 09, 2020•1 hr 11 min
April 2020 2017 was the centenary of a relatively little-known genius who went straight from studying mathematics at Cambridge to codebreaking for the Government Code and Cypher School. The crucial role that Bill Tutte played in the attack on the system used by Hitler and his high command, Lorenz, not only broke it but also helped paved the way for the creation of the world’s first large-scale electronic digital computer, Colossus. Finally Bill received the recognition he so richly deserved with...
Apr 03, 2020•55 min
March 2020 Bletchley Park Museum is currently closed as a precautionary measure to help contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Our staff and volunteers like so many around the world are in lockdown, self-isolation or working remotely from home. Bletchley Parks CEO Iain Standen said “This isn’t the first time that Bletchley Park has operated at unprecedented times of national crisis and it is the values of those that have and still work here – understanding, collaboration, integrity, perse...
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr 5 min
March 2020 As 1945 began, the Germans’ last roll of the dice in the Ardennes has failed. They were left to face the overwhelming force of men and materiel of the Allied armies approaching the Fatherland from all directions. For the Allies in the west, the natural barrier of the Rhine River was all that lay between them and the open plains of Germany, and the last phase of the war in the west. Meanwhile the Government Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park were producing more intelligence tha...
Mar 13, 2020•1 hr 15 min
February 2020 In contrast to its roots as a top secret organisation, the name of Bletchley Park is now recognised around the world. Sharing Bletchley Park’s stories with our audiences through education is at the heart what we now do here. Since first opening the site as a museum in 1992, educational programming has been a crucial part of the work of Bletchley Park Trust. Our Learning team of dedicated staff and volunteers now welcomes over 35,000 visitors to the site each year and reaches even m...
Feb 18, 2020•48 min
