Bletchley Park People By Marion Hill

£10.99
Marion Hill has used the transcript 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 and 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 of secrecy created divisions within the organisations, and illnesses; and many felt disappointed at the lack of acknowledgment 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 personnel albums of those stationed at Bletchley.