Bletchley Park

November 2018 In this month’s ‘It Happened Here’ we are marking 75 years since the establishment of the Eastcote Outstation, the site at which Bombe machines were operated from the autumn of 1943. By 1945 over 100 machines were at Eastcote along with over 800 Wrens and RAF technicians, and a small group of American GIs. How did it start and what was life there really like? Bletchley Park’s researc...

October 2018 In this It Happened Here episode we are going back to the autumn of 1943 and the invasion of Italy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw it as strike at the Germans via the “soft underbelly of Europe”, while our American allies saw it as a “tough old gut”. At a strategic level the allies may have had differing opinions but in the Intelligence War the cooperation grew closer wi...

September 2018 During World War Two more than 10,000 people worked for GC&CS either at Bletchley Park, it’s Outstations or connected branches both Civilian and Military. This gives us a wealth of different stories to be able to tell and in this second visit to this year’s Reunion we will bring you 3 more exclusive interviews with our Veterans. Sergeant Stanley Clegg served from 1943 till 1945...

September 2018 Every year, close to the anniversary of GC&CS staff first arriving at Bletchley Park in 1939 we invite our Veterans and their families back to celebrate their vital war work. It’s our favourite day of the year at the Museum and it allows us to share their amazing stories with our listeners. This year also coincides with the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Auxiliary Terr...

August 2018 This is the second of two episodes this month. In this It Happened Here episode we’ll be taking you further back than our normal 75 years, this time to September 1938. Twenty years after The Great War, the clouds of conflict were once again looming across Europe. Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to try to avert war. At the...

August 2018 This is the first of two episodes this month. In August 1943 at the Quebec Conference the Allies began the initial discussions for what would ultimate become Operation Overlord, the invasion of France in 1944. So it seems fitting that 75 years later Bletchley Park have released the plans for what will be an exciting new exhibition opening in spring 2019. D-DAY: Interception, Intelligen...

July 2018 This month we swing a shoe, meet the artist exploring the layers and fragmentation of the Bletchley Park story and hear from a Foreign Office clerk who thought she was going to be a spy. Hear what happened when Bletchley Park played host to a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest swing dance lesson. The swing dance club, JiveSwing, led the couples, many of whom who’d turned out in...

June 2018 This month it’s all about 007. Bletchley Park has opened a new exhibition in historic Hut 12, featuring memos, letters and personal photographs of Ian Fleming, a fantastic collection of Bond novels through the decades and original, specially commissioned works by talented and innovative artists, inspired by scenes, themes and characters from Bond novels. The Bond creator and author, Ian...

May 2018 The Bletchley Park story is about more than Enigma. A different kind of traffic was also coming over the airwaves, being intercepted and mined for crucial intelligence. But it was generated by an even more fiendishly complex system than Enigma, which was itself believed to be unbreakable. Lorenz was the machine being used by Hitler and his high command to send top level, strategic message...

April 2018 A brand new exhibition telling the story of the Bombe machines has opened in Hut 11a, where they were housed during World War Two. Hundreds of Bombe machines were made and operated at both Bletchley Park and its outstations. This exhibition tells the story of how this incredible technological breakthrough came to be, and the stories of the people whose ingenuity and hard work made them...

March 2018 From the attempt to assassinate Hitler in July 1944, to orders to shoot dead any German soldier seen fleeing Riga as a cowardly traitor, the Hut 3 Headlines tell a story of World War Two in tiny snippet form. They were succinct summaries of Enigma messages sent by the German army and air force, intercepted and deciphered by Bletchley Park. These messages were then boiled down to the bar...

February 2018 Is Bletchley Park about codes, machines or people? Of those, the most fascinating stories come from the people who did this incredible job, and then kept it absolutely secret, for at least another 30 years. Their memories are precious and it’s crucial that we capture as many as we can, so that future generations can read and listen to their first-hand accounts of not only their amazi...

January 2018 January is a good time to take stock and look at the year ahead. 75 years ago, it was January 1943 and, after a dark and difficult year, things were starting to look up. By this time, Hut 8 had broken back into the naval Enigma codenamed Shark, after a devastating ten-month blackout. The daring raid on a sinking submarine which cost the lives of two brave sailors became a huge turning...

December 2017 Bletchley Park’s Oral History project has been running for six years, interviewing more than 400 veterans so far. These personal testimonies capture the unique and precious memories of people who worked at Bletchley Park and its outstations. Not only are these interviews a great source of historical facts, adding to what we know about the work carried out by the Government Code and C...

December 2017 Bletchley Park’s Oral History project has been running for six years, interviewing more than 400 veterans so far. These personal testimonies capture the unique and precious memories of people who worked at Bletchley Park and its outstations. Not only are these interviews a great source of historical facts, adding to what we know about the work carried out by the Government Code and C...

November 2017 This month, it’s all about women. A century ago, the Women’s Royal Naval Service - aka Wrens - were founded. They went on to play a crucial part in the codebreaking effort during World War Two. By November 1917, Britain was three years into a bloody, devastating war. In this episode, we explore what kind of work women did during both wars and what they - and the men - thought of it....

October 2017 75 years ago, one of the most decisive battles of World War Two marked the end of the beginning. El Alamein was of huge strategic importance to both the Allied and Axis forces in North Africa. Rommel and Montgomery’s forces clashed twice. The second battle would become famous, making a household name of this obscure outpost. The intelligence was a crucial weapon. Rommel’s attack plan...

September 2017 There were so many memories shared at this year’s Veterans’ Reunion, that we’ve split this month’s episode into two parts. This time, we’ll hear some of the longer conversations, as people who spent part of their youth carrying out vital war work, tucked away in the Buckinghamshire countryside or at one of Bletchley Park’s equally secretive outstations. They went on to keep their li...

September 2017 More than 110 Veterans returned to Bletchley Park for this year’s reunion - the highest number in recent years. They came back to the headquarters of the Government Code and Cipher School, where they, among thousands of men and women, carried out vital war work which made a huge difference, not only to the outcome of World War Two, but to the digital age in which we live today. Once...

August 2017 Hear some of the best bits from five packed years of this podcast, primarily from the Veterans themselves, but also a smattering of prestigious visitors down the years, from movie stars to heads of foreign security agencies. The highlight of the calendar at Bletchley Park is without doubt the annual Veterans’ Reunion, when people who worked at the Government Code and Cypher School and...

July 2017 What happened when the Admiralty didn’t believe the intelligence coming from Bletchley Park? The answer; huge losses at sea. But this is not to suggest blame - hindsight can be cruel. The Tirpitz was a much-feared German battleship - it was the biggest they had built. Bletchley Park provided intelligence under the banner of Ultra - the highest level of secrecy - that it had not yet set s...

June 2017 Bill Tutte played a crucial role in deciphering messages between Hitler and his high command. Yet he remains one of Bletchley Park’s unsung heroes. This little-known genius went straight from studying mathematics at Cambridge to the Government Code and Cypher School, where he used his analytical brilliance to help break what was believed to be an unbreakable code. His work also paved the...

May 2017 Highs and lows of the codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park are the subject of this month’s episode. There were a lot of lows, but it’s not all doom and gloom. We know how the war ended but, back then, the threat of invasion still hung in the air and Hitler’s forces were making great gains, not only in Europe. This was also around the time when the German Navy decided to tighten the se...

April 2017 Bletchley Park’s brand new exhibition, Off Duty, High Spirits in Low Times, is now open. It explores what happened outside of the gruelling shifts the thousands of workers did, day and night. Wartime work at the Government Code and Cypher School was stressful and tiring - but the authorities understood it was important to keep staff happy - and healthy. We’ll hear from Veterans who gave...

March 2017 This month’s It Happened Here story is a truly global one. It’s about what happened when the war was no longer just in Europe. In December 1941, Japan entered World War Two. This meant intelligence gathering and processing became a far bigger and more complex task, which brought about the need for a significant expansion of the top secret operation at Bletchley Park. We'll hear from two...