| Tommy20 | 17 Jun 2013 8:59 a.m. PST |
Hi all! After visiting the Spy Museum in Washington DC last week, my wife has expressed interest in learning more about the Bletchley Park codebreakers. There are a lot of books on the subject, but which ones are the best? |
| MajorB | 17 Jun 2013 9:07 a.m. PST |
"The Secret Life of Bletchley Park" by Sinclair McKay.
link |
| TodCreasey | 17 Jun 2013 9:27 a.m. PST |
I really enjoyed Project X |
| little o | 17 Jun 2013 10:30 a.m. PST |
How was the museum? I really wanted to tour when I was there in Feb., but couldn't work the schedule.
M |
| Toaster | 17 Jun 2013 3:29 p.m. PST |
I recently read The Emperors Codebreakers, which focus on their work on the Japenese codes, really good book. Robert |
| MAD MIKE | 17 Jun 2013 6:55 p.m. PST |
Between Silk and Cyanide is good read,written by a code-maker at Bletchley. link |
| Hornswoggler | 17 Jun 2013 8:34 p.m. PST |
The Enigma War, Jozef Garlinski |
| Martin Rapier | 18 Jun 2013 5:47 a.m. PST |
Another vote for Project X. 'The Codebreakers' by Simon Singh is also good but more wide ranging than just Bletchley. He also wrote a specific book about Colossus. |
| Tommy20 | 18 Jun 2013 7:29 a.m. PST |
little o- My family enjoyed the museum. It isn't very big, but the collection is dense, so it takes a while to see and read everything. It also got crowded pretty quickly. They had what appeared to be a temporary exhibit on the villains of James Bond, that I found more interesting than much of the real-world stuff. Thanks all! I'm off to Amazon… |
| Bertie | 18 Jun 2013 9:24 a.m. PST |
Smith, Michael and Erskine, Ralph (Eds)(2002) "Action This Day" (London:Bantam.) Smith wrote "Station X" and "The Emperor's Codes." "'Absolutely the best book ever written about codebreaking at Blechley Park.' Louis Kruh, Editor, Cryptologia" says the blurb on the cover, and I'll go along with that. It's a collection of 22 essays on all aspects of Bletchly. The downside is that the narrative flow suffers a bit. But the upside is that you can go through things in small chunks which is useful for people like me with a 40 year old maths "O" Level. It even has the little ditty that they wrote because they were so pleased when Andrew Cunningham turn up to personally thank them for giving him the ULTRA that made the Battle of Matapan possible… they were so used to people taking credit for their work that Cunningham's gesture went down really well… even if neither they nor Cunningham could ever tell anyone about it! Cheers,
Bertie |
| Toaster | 18 Jun 2013 5:04 p.m. PST |
Correction to my earlier post it was "The Emperors Codes" same book as Bertie mentions. Robert |
is back from Council of Five Nations.
