E41 - Best Ever Year

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2015

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

December 2015

Bletchley Park has had its best ever year. In the whole of 2014, 196,000 people came to discover the secret world of World War Two codebreaking and this year, with nearly a month still to go, the figure stands at more than 280,000 thousand.

New exhibitions which opened this year included The Road to Bletchley Park, about codebreaking during World War One, and the little-known story of one of World War Two’s forgotten heroes, Gordon Welchman. Among the treasures which went on show for the first time were secret notes stuffed into the roof cracks, found during the restoration of Hut 6, and the story of the seamen who drowned stealing vital codebooks from a sinking U-Boat which will open on 14th December.

Join host Katherine and producer Mark as they look back over this memorable year, in the company of many of our Veterans and their proud families.

Visit the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour to find your Codebreaker relative and email [email protected] to find out more about how you can celebrate that connection in our Codebreakers’ Wall.

Picture: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2Veteran, #History, #BBC, #TheImitationGame,

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:37.4	We find ourselves outside Block C on another cold December day.
0:41.6	This is becoming an annual tradition.
0:43.2	Every December we look back over another amazing year at Bletchley Park for the Christmas special or the December episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:51.1	We join you as we look back over Bletchley Park's best ever year. Now, to put it
0:55.9	into context, in 2014, the whole of 2014, 196,000 people came to visit Bletchley Park and
1:02.7	discover the secret world of World War II co-breaking. This year, so far, with nearly a month still
1:07.6	to go, the figure is well over quarter of a million and racing towards 300,000 people.
1:13.2	And it's no wonder, new exhibitions that opened this year include the road to Bletchley Park about co-breaking during World War I
1:19.1	and the little-known story of one of World War II's forgotten heroes, Gordon Welchman.
1:24.1	Among the treasures which went on show for the first time were secret notes found stuffed into the roof cracks,
1:29.4	discovered during the restoration of Hutt 6, and the story of men who drowned stealing vital codebooks from a sinking U-boat will open soon in Naval Co-breaking Hut 8.
1:39.1	Let's take a look back through this amazing year. To do just that, I'm joined by podcast producer Mark Cotton,
1:44.5	who's met some incredible people through the podcast this year.
1:47.9	Mark, cost you my back as we walk into Bloxie
1:50.0	and tell me about some of the people you've met this year.
1:52.5	It's been the veterans for me this year.
1:54.6	I mean, especially at the reunion.
1:56.6	It was our busiest reunion ever.
1:58.6	How many veterans did we have in total?
2:01.0	It was over 90, wasn't it?
	...

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