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The Bletchley Park Codebreakers (Dialogue Espionage Classics) Paperback – December 13, 2011

by Ralph Erskine (Editor), Michael Smith (Editor)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 47 ratings
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Bletchley Park was the site of Britain's main decryption center, the Government Code and Cypher School. This extraordinary book includes essays by some of Britain’s foremost historians and academics and traces the legacy of Bletchley Park from the innovative work which led to the breaking of Enigma and other wartime codes to the invention of modern computing and its influence on Cold War codebreaking.

Crucially, it also features contributions from former Bletchley Park codebreakers, whose personal reminiscences and very human stories of life and work in wartime Bletchley make compelling reading.

Michael Smith is the author of Killer Elite.

Ralph Erskine is one of Britain’s leading historians of wartime codebreaking.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    560 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Biteback Publishing
  4. Publication date
    December 13, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    5.1 x 1.6 x 7.7 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1849540780
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1849540780
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Biteback Publishing (December 13, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1849540780
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1849540780
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 1.6 x 7.7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 47 ratings

About the author

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Michael Smith

Michael Smith

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Michael Smith is the number-one bestselling author of Station X. He served in the British Army's Intelligence Corps and was an award-winning journalist for the BBC, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. He is now a full-time novelist and intelligence historian.

Smith is the author of a number of books, including The Secrets of Station X; SIX: The Real James Bonds and Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews. He is the editor of The Secret Agent's Bedside Reader, a compilation of writing on spies by spies, which includes the work of John le Carre, Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene and Kim Philby.

Smith's latest book is The Real Special Relationship, a widely acclaimed account of the exceptionally close intelligence relationship between British and American spies and codebreakers from Bletchley Park to the war in Ukraine. He lives near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
47 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

corene wagner
5.0 out of 5 stars I am very interested in WWII since I was born in 1940 and remember my stepfather was a tail gunner in the AF.
Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2013
Verified Purchase
I just admire how much effort the code breakers put into breaking the German codes. It meant so much to the allied war effort.
It is really hard to make this generation of young people to appreciate all that we are free in the world today because of the efforts of these people. Looking at the pictures of the enigma, it is amazing that it worked.
3 people found this helpful
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Rory Hope
4.0 out of 5 stars Bletchley, by people who know.
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2017
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A most interesting account of the goings on at Bletchley, written by people who were actually involved. The chapters are somewhat variable in style and readability; nevertheless they are, without exception, fascinating. This is not a book for your normal 'Book Club' get-together, as it requires some serious thought. Having read the book, I now have a much better appreciation of the wonderful work the people at Bletchley Park carried out, and indeed the lives they helped save.
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sonia h
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2014
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Wonderfulstory.
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Rod Pohl
3.0 out of 5 stars Not suitable for Kindle
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2017
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There is a need to read the cross references which in the Kindle format is not possible, so you are up in the air much of time, a better explanation on how the code breakers worked would have been great.
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Tghu Verd
2.0 out of 5 stars Dry as dust.
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2017
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The Amazon blurb for this book concludes with "...making The Bletchley Park Codebreakers compulsive reading." I wish!

It opens with a war time letter, concisely tells the story of that, then retells the same story just a little bit later, why I was not sure. In between we get lists of protagonists and their potted history then some opinion of why the English intelligence service was superior to the US intelligence service before it kind of starts to actually tell a story.

By which point I was bored to insensibility. Really, how the Bletchley Park crew cracked Enigma etc. **should** be compelling reading. But this is confused muddle goes scholarly then adventure story and back again seemingly in the same paragraph. OK, not quite, but it sure felt that way.

So, not one I'm recommending. Perhaps if you are studying this for school, but I was hoping for a gripping true life war time read and it was sadly not that.
One person found this helpful
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William R Clark
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2014
Tbe book was too technical to read as a casual history. Too much detail.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Fergal McCraken
2.0 out of 5 stars Don't bother.
Reviewed in Australia on July 23, 2017
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Stodgy and boring. Laborious. Like reading treacle. I tried to keep going but I lost after the first chapter. Waste of money.
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Arturo
5.0 out of 5 stars Reissue of an excellent book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 20, 2011
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This book is a re-issue of Action This Day, published in 2001 under a new title and with an extra chapter. The original version is now seen, rightly, as one of the best books about the work of the Bletchley Park codebreakers, with important contributions from some of the leading academics writing about it as well as contributions from some the codebreakers themselves. The only difference I can see between the re-issue and the original is a chapter about work on the Japanese Naval Code JN-25 (there may be some other updating but nothing major that I could see). So if you own the original book then perhaps it is not really worth spending the money just for this chapter (although it is interesting in its own right). If on the other hand you do not have the original then certainly buy this as one of the best all round books on Bletchley Park - on that basis I rate it as five star.
57 people found this helpful
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Antony
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but oddly structured
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 1, 2023
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This is an excellent book if you're interested in the breaking of German, Japanese, Russian and a surprising number of other military and diplomatic codes used before, during and soon after the second world war, with Bletchley Park being the most famous location where the people doing this work were based.
There are some wonderful quotes and first-hand stories about the people involved, but the book overall is rather like a set of conference proceedings where each presented paper is published, one after another, with no consideration to overlap, continuity or style.
I think it would have been better if the editors had put a bit of effort into picking out comments from various authors on a single topic and presenting these together, rather than simply printing what each contributor wanted to say, clearly without having any idea what the others were writing about or how they were writing.
I still think it's well worth reading, but it could have been better arranged, and the authors of the separate chapters could have benefitted from being given some consistent editorial guidance.
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NumberOne
5.0 out of 5 stars A well researched history. Dispels myths. Could not ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2018
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A well researched history. Dispels myths. Could not have been done without other nations, especially the Polish.
There were many difficulties and Bletchley was not, by any means, reading Codes continuously. A story of dedication and triumph.
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alan
4.0 out of 5 stars alan
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2012
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The Bletchey Park Codebreakers is a very interesting but quite detailed read. The book covers all aspects of Pre, During and Post WWII British Espionage , starting in 1917 and leading into the Cold War. The book is quite detailed when explaining about Bombes, Ciphers, Cribs etc, so some prior knowledge on this would be helpful. Due to the secretcy of the Espionage it has taken 60 plus years for some of the details to be released in to the public domain so through this book we are now able to acknowledge the people and some by name who were instrumental in defeating the Axis powers and shortening WWII.
9 people found this helpful
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