E66 - In Their Words Part 1

Bletchley Park

December 2017

Bletchley Park’s Oral History project has been running for six years, interviewing more than 400 veterans so far. These personal testimonies capture the unique and precious memories of people who worked at Bletchley Park and its outstations.

Not only are these interviews a great source of historical facts, adding to what we know about the work carried out by the Government Code and Cypher School during World War Two, they’re also a treasure trove of lesser-known details about the processes and what life was like during that time. Adding reminiscences about food, fun and uniform to the official records of how the codebreaking was done make this truly a people’s history of Bletchley Park.

In this episode we hear from Phyllis Keates, who operated Britain’s answer to Enigma; a Typex machine. We learn more about the stringent security in the recruitment process from Kenneth Nicolson, who served in the Royal Signals and we listen in on Morse slip reader Daphne Canning’s account of a V1 attack on her accommodation.

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2017

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