100 PEOPLE YOU NEVER KNEW WERE AT BLETCHLEY PARK

Sinclair McKay

For a long while no-one knew that anyone had been at Bletchley Park.

Though 10,000 people had worked at the wartime codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire, they had had to sign the Official Secrets Act, and they kept their vow implacably for decades, even keeping their own spouses and family in the dark about the crucial work they had done cracking the German and Japanses military codes.

But what did they go on to achieve after the war? And what about those who did become household names, but whose Bletchley Park years remain unknown?

Now Sinclair McKay tells the stories of a hundred such people, and the often equally extraordinary lives they went on to. Here are dozens of unsung heroes, who certainly made their mark after the war as well as during its finest hour: people like Jane Fawcett, a trained ballerina who went on to co-found the Victorian Society and save St Pancras Station; or James Bernard, a protégé of Benjamin Britten who wrote all the music for the Dracula films; or Osla Benning, Prince Philip’s first girlfriend.

Sinclair McKay is the author of the bestselling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, The Secret Listeners and Dresden: The Fire and the Darkness, among many books.

‘Most codebreakers’ families were unaware of their relatives’ crucial work. This book does a great service in revealing the life stories of 100 of them,’ Kate Green, Country Life

‘A great idea for a book’, Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC Technology Correspondent

October 2021
256pp
£14.99
978 1 8384051 2 0
198 x 129mm
8pp b/w photographs
Jacketed hardback
History