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Product Description
The British government's top secret Code & Cypher School at Bletchley Park, otherwise known as Station X, was the unlikely setting for one of the most vital undercover operations of the Second World War. It was at Bletchley in present - day Milton Keynes that teams of code breakers succeeded in cracking Germany's supposedly unbreakable Enigma codes, thereby shortening the war by at least two years. Marion Hill has used the transcripts of some 200 interviews and memoirs from among the thousands of people who worked at Station X to give a remarkable insight into the daily lives of the civilian and service personnel who contributed to the breaking of the Enigma and other Axis codes. She explores their recruitment and training, their first impressions on arrival at Bletchley Park ('BP'), their working conditions, (including the in-house food and entertainment), and their time off in billets and beyond. These BP workers, from boffins to debs to ex-bank clerks and engineers, were united in the need to 'keep mum' - even with their family and close friends. However, the stressful burden on secrecy created divisions within the organisation, and illnesses; and many felt disappointed at the lack of acknowledgement for a vital job about which they were forbidden to speak until many years later. A selection of archive photographs and illustrations accompanies the text, drawn from the Bletchley Park Trust Archive and from the personal albums of those stationed at Bletchley.
About the Author
Marion Hill MA taught English for 23 years at schools in Milton Keynes and Bedfordshire. She now works full time as an author and has written a number of books including Bradwell Past and resent (1998), Basildon IOP (1999), Welwyn Garden City IOP (1999) and A Century of Basildon (2000). She lives in Olney, Bucks.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A pioneering, if flawed, work,
By C.S "C.S" (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bletchley Park People (Paperback)
The history of Bletchley Park since 1973, when F. W. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret: The Inside Story of Operation Ultra, Bletchley Park and Enigma shattered the existing historiography of WWII, has been a field which has expanded hugely. There are now hundreds of works, in the form of novel, film, article and full monograph which focus on the history of Bletchley Park. However few, if any, have been written with the lives of everyday Bletchley Park's workers in mind. That was, of course, until Marion Hill wrote 'Bletchley Park People'. As a result Marion Hill has provided us with a new look at an old subject; a social history of Bletchley Park from the point of view of the thousands of unknown and uncelebrated individuals who worked at the Park.
The work is based upon substantial research at the Imperial War Museum and the Bletchley Park Trust Archive, and the bulk of the material used are written and recorded memories of Bletchley Park veterans stored at these depositories. As a result `Bletchley Park People' is a work which fuses together numerous anecdotes which, accompanied and contextualised by the author's commentary, creates a delightful synthesis of history and reminisce. However, the work is not without flaws. In particular `Bletchley Park People' has a tendency to ignore a number of key issues and suffers from several methodological flaws. In the case of the former, the issue of gender, for example, is in need of considerable expansion. While the author notes that female employees encountered a `glass ceiling' [p. 78], the issue is hurriedly discarded within a few paragraphs. In the case of the methodological issues, the book is based upon anecdote. In itself that is not a problem if anecdote is supported with further supporting evidence. However `Bletchley Park People' shows little evidence of being supported by any other forms of archival evidence. Furthermore the book's bibliography lists only seven works of secondary literature, though other works are included in notes. As a result Marion Hill leaves her work almost entirely reliant upon anecdote. Other issues, particularly the lack of an index, are simply irritating. Additionally, for those readers who wish to research the topic further, the book offers irritating obstacles. While `Bletchley Park People' is supplemented with endnotes, many of which list the relevant archive employed by the author, full references, to specific archival files and interviews, are eschewed. Worse still, many direct quotes are left entirely without reference even to specific archives. All in all, though `Bletchley Park People' is a work littered with flaws both great and small, it is still pioneering, fascinating and often delightful.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
P.M.B.,
This review is from: Bletchley Park People (Paperback)
An enjoyable read in that a picture is built up of the daily life of several of the ordinary "footsoldiers".
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