The

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

It's Christmas. This is a Bledchley Park podcast extra.

M.C. Fontaine here.

I'm sat with Catherine Lynch, presenter of the Bledsley Park podcast.

It's Christmas.

It's Christmas.

So we thought we'd just put a quick little extra out just to say thank you to all our listeners to look back over a fantastic year.

It's Christmas.

It's Christmas. So Catherine, you got together with Ian Standen, the CEO, didn't you?

I wanted to get his thoughts on his first year in post at Bletchley Park. It's been a bit of a baptism of fire for him, but exciting times at the Bletchley Park Trust. So it's been a great year at the Bletchley Park Trust. We've had

royal visits, VIPs, permission to start the HLF project. What else? Are you looking back on this year?

Well, firstly, yet another increase in visitor numbers. It looks like by the end of this year

will be about 165,000 visitors, which is about 25,000 up on last year, which is fantastic,

particularly given the current economic climate. As you say, it's been a year of lots of visits from famous people. Prince Andrew came and visited us in March

and had a very quick, fleeting look around the site. We had William Hayes visiting a couple of

months ago to come and announce the donation of half a million pounds by the Foreign Office to allow

us to close off and start our HLF funded project.

And the future is bright as we go forward.

We're now not just looking at 2013, but of course the next 10 years.

Indeed.

When I arrived in post at the start of the year, John Scart, our chairman of trustees,

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