E141 - Security & Insecurity

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 10 August 2022

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

August 2022

This month instead of commemorating a World War 2 Anniversary, we have decided to do something a little different as we celebrate the 10th Anniversary of The Bletchley Park Podcast.

So after 10 years and more than 170 hours of content, we decided to answer our most frequently asked question, “How was Bletchley Park kept secret?”.

Such a ‘big question’ would be too much for just one historian to answer, so this month we have three. Our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon & Research Officer, Dr Thomas Cheetham are joined by GCHQ’s former Departmental Historian, Tony Comer as they delve into Bletchley Park’s wartime Security & Insecurity.

Special thanks to Dr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

This episode features Wyn Ribchester from our Oral History Archive.

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2022

Producers Note:
We would like to thank everyone who has helped to create the show over the last decade. The list is far too long for here, but I’ve included many of them in the middle of this show.

Finally, the biggest thank you has to go out to our loyal listeners; we have so much fun making these shows for you. Thanks for sticking with us and here’s to the next 10 years.

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Spys,

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The from the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing this is the
0:33.3	bletchley park podcast welcome to the bletchley Park podcast.
0:40.7	Welcome to the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:43.9	This episode, we're doing something a little bit different.
0:49.2	And instead of commemorating a World War II anniversary, we are celebrating a podcast anniversary.
0:50.5	So we are pleased to welcome you to our 10-year podcast anniversary special.
0:55.5	With us are Bletchley Park's research historian, Dr David Kenyon, Bletchley Park's research officer,
1:00.6	Dr Thomas Cheatham, and longtime friend of the podcast and GCHQ's former departmental historian,
1:06.5	Tony Comer.
1:08.0	We thought that this month we would look at Bletchley Park's most frequently asked question.
1:13.6	So I will pass to David. What are we asked the most often here at Bletchley Park?
1:18.9	The thing that Tom and I are asked every time we give a tour and every time we give a presentation
1:24.3	or anything else is how was Bletchley Park kept secret?
1:29.5	And the thing that people find very difficult to understand is that by the time it reached its peak
1:34.8	in 1945, it was, as we frequently say, an organisation of nearly 9,000 people working on this site
1:41.0	in its immediate outstations. And so on the face of it, a very large body of people,
1:47.0	not exactly in the middle of nowhere. I mean, it actually wasn't a very big place at the time,
1:50.6	but it was still relatively close to London and everything else. We're not in the wild of the
1:54.8	Scottish mountains or something. So just how was the secret of what GCNCS was doing kept?
2:01.5	And this is why we brought Tony in because he has a great little expertise in, well, keeping secrets for a start.
2:08.7	Also in the specific measures that were taken at Bletchley Park to preserve the secrecy of the operation.
	...

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