{"id":5195,"date":"2014-11-16T17:36:58","date_gmt":"2014-11-16T17:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5195"},"modified":"2014-11-16T17:36:58","modified_gmt":"2014-11-16T17:36:58","slug":"bletchley-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=5195","title":{"rendered":"A secret revealed…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Benedict<\/a>
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the brilliant and tragic Alan Turing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Accolades are pouring in for the movie The Imitation Game \u2013 featuring an amazing performance by Benedict Cumberbatch as the Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing.<\/p>\n

The movie has served to focus attention on Turing and his work at the secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. It\u2019s also served to highlight the injustice of the treatment he received when he was convicted for what was then a crime \u2013 being homosexual.<\/p>\n

Recently I visited Bletchley Park \u2013 that was before the movie publicity began, and my knowledge of what happened there was pretty sketchy.<\/p>\n

The old saying is right \u2013 truth is sometimes much stranger \u2013 much better \u2013 than fiction.<\/p>\n

The first thing that struck me about the place was its size. At the height of its activity \u2013 there were 9,000 people working there. Most of those were billeted with local families. Everyone MUST have seen those thousands of people entering the site every day. Yet the secret was never revealed. Can you imagine that happening in this day of mobile phone cameras and social media?<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A rare image of the code-breakers at work<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not only that \u2013 the secret was kept for years after the war. A book released in 1974 broke the silence \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t until the place was at risk of demolition in 1991 that moves began to conserve the site and tell its remarkable story.<\/p>\n

The buildings that once housed the code-breakers have been turned into a fascinating museum \u2013 we went planning to spend a couple of hours, and were there the whole day.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The huts have been restored to how they looked during the war.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The guides did their best to explain how the codes were broken \u2013 and how the famous bombe machine works \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t easy to understand. I like to think I\u2019m reasonable intelligent \u2013 but I stood in awe of Turing and his team and the work that they did \u2013 work which formed the basis of so much of our daily lives today. Every computer, every computerised system \u2013 owes something to the work done at Bletchley Park.<\/p>\n

\"Before<\/a>
Before Alan Turing’s breakthroughs, the code was cracked by sliding bits of paper through slots in pages covered with letters.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Some<\/a>
Some of the original papers have survived – with the code-breakers scribbles still intact<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Towards the end of the day \u2013 we were watching a demonstration of the Bombe machine \u2013 and the guide told us a story\u2026<\/p>\n

Not all that long ago, he was giving a demonstration, to a group which included an elderly couple. When he was finished, the woman said – It wasn\u2019t quite like that \u2013 but you almost got it right.<\/p>\n

She then admitted she had worked in one of the huts during the war. Her husband turned to her, shock on his face. She had never told him. Just as he had never told her that he had also worked there \u2013 in one of the other huts. They worked just a few yards apart, but didn’t meet until after the war. In their long marriage, until that day, neither had ever told the secret they held.<\/p>\n

\"Churchill<\/a>
Churchill ordered the machines and their plans to be destroyed after the war – but some have been rebuilt and they even work!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To this day Bletchley Park keeps its secrets.<\/p>\n

People who worked there during the war have been approached to tell their stories \u2013 so that the history can be preserved. Some have agreed to do so \u2013 now that the war is long past and the secret is out. But others have declined \u2013 saying they would still abide by the official secrets act that they signed so long ago.<\/p>\n

\"They<\/a>
They Enigma machine that created the codes. I was surprised to learn is was commercially available before the war – but modified before encoding Nazi secrets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Alan Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 and\u00a0sentenced to chemical castration. He lost his security clearance – even though there was no evidence he was a spy. And he was removed from all his ongoing government work. Turing\u00a0died of cyanide poisoning in 1954. He was 41 years old. It was ruled a suicide, but that has been disputed by people who believe it was an accident. His story reached an ending of sorts just a few months ago. In August of this year, the Queen officially pardoned him.<\/p>\n

\"Alan<\/a>
Alan Turing – what a brilliant mind he was.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are still buildings at Bletchley that are closed to the public, and not restored\u2026 yet. I wonder what stories they have to tell.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Accolades are pouring in for the movie The Imitation Game \u2013 featuring an amazing performance by Benedict Cumberbatch as the Enigma code-breaker Alan Turing. The movie has served to focus attention…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-my-travels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-1lN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}