The

The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the November 2019 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.

GCHQ at 100.

During World War I, the United Kingdom had two separate cryptographic organisations,

the Navy's Room 40 and the Army's MI1B. Both had major

code-breaking success during the conflict, but it was decided after the war that they should

merge. On the 1st of November 1919, the Government Code and Cipher School, or GCNCS, was created.

Best known for its work during World War II at Bletchley Park, after the war, its name was changed to one more familiar to us today, GCHQ.

To mark the anniversary, a special event was held exactly 100 years later, with past and present members of staff and representatives of the other Five Eyes intelligence services from around the world.

We'll hear from GCHQ's current director, Jeremy Fleming, as well as memories from the staff

that were specially recorded for the event.

We catch up with Bletchley Park veteran Betty Webb, who shares her pride at being part of the

organisation and talks about the changing role of women in defence with her guest, retired

Colonel Ali Brown.

Finally, we mark the retirement of a very good friend of the podcast, GCHQ's official historian, Tony Comer.

The centenary event was a chance to say goodbye to Tony, and meet his replacement, whose identity we can exclusively reveal in this podcast.

Thank you. exclusively reveal in this podcast. We were sitting there and listening to a mirror. And then, what's his name, The president of the time.

He had his finger on the button ready to press it.

They'd already put the silos in Cuba

to launch these missiles

and the missiles were on the way over.

...