This book acts as a social history of the activities of the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park during the second world war. It becomes clear fairly early on that Mckay doesn’t have any technical knowledge and doesn’t even try to get across any of the technical aspects of ciphers and codebreaking, but that’s not the point of this book. If you want the technical details, then a book like Colossus: Bletchley Park’s Greatest Secret is probably a better choice. However, this book does look at the people at Bletchley and the lives they led during their time there. In this regard, it succeeds, with interviews from survivors and extracts from various documents in different archives.
Various aspects are discussed, from recruitment to Bletchley, and how that changed over the course of the war, to the way the work was apportioned and segregated between the various huts, to the famous social side of the Park. It’s well-written and makes for a very interesting and enjoyable read. McKay has done his research with his interviewees who all sound like a fascinating bunch, but with narrow knowledge (due to the secrecy at the site). McKay is able to draw the various accounts into a more rounded and wider account.
So quite a broad, rather than detailed, account of the work of Bletchley, but definitely fascinating without any jargon to worry the non-technical.
