Images of The National Archives: Codebreakers by Stephen Twigge

Images of The National Archives: Codebreakers (Images of the The National Archives)

by Stephen Twigge

The book reveals the story of British Codebreakers from the reign of Elizabeth I to the Cold War. It explores the use of ciphers during the Napoleonic wars, the role of the Royal Mail's Secret Office and the activities the Admiralty's Room 40' leading to the creation of the Government's Code and Cypher School. The main theme of the book are the events of the Second World War and the battle to break the German enigma codes. The centre of Britain's codebreaking operation was located at Bletchley Park in rural Buckinghamshire and it was from here that a hastily assembled army of codebreakers battled to decipher Nazi German's secret wartime communications. The deciphered high-level signals intelligence was known as Ultra and had a major influence on the outcome of the war, most notably contributing to crucial successes in the battle for the Atlantic and the D-Day landings in June 1944\. The book also reveals the work undertaken in the Far-East and the allied efforts to break the Japanese military cipher code named Purple. The book ends with a re-assessment of the work undertaken by the British code breaker and mathematician Alan Turing and a brief overview of the codebreaking operations undertaken by GCHQ during the formative period of the Cold War.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

Share
Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Images of The National Archives: Codebreakers is a historical pictorial collection documenting the history of Britain's codebreakers from the Renaissance on toward the modern activity of the Signal Corps during and after WW2, Bletchley Park, Turing (gets his own chapter) and the rest. Released 30th April 2020 by Pen & Sword, it's 144 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats.

The author, Dr. Stephen Twigge, is a historian at the National Archives, and definitely seems to know what he's talking about. The book is very well researched, moderately well annotated (especially for such a short book), and written in layman accessible language which is never dry or boring. The illustrations and images are the main attraction and the author does a wonderful job of explaining and illuminating without pedantry. I really enjoyed his commentary and got much more out of the illustrations by way of his explanations.

I have been a cryptography nerd since I was a little kid and grew up a maths/coding fanatic, and Turing was an early hero of mine. The author does a decent job of explaining some complex early computer science concepts which Turing was exploring, an overview of Enigma, as well as giving a brief and dispassionate biography of his life and tragic death in 1954. I really enjoyed seeing facsimile pictures of some of Turing's notes and research papers; it gave me a little chill to see notations in his own hand in pen.

The book includes a cross referenced index, bibliography, and notes. Very well illustrated and engagingly written. Four stars. This would be a superlative choice for readers interested in history. I learnt quite a lot and enjoyed paging through and seeing the documents and notes.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 8 May, 2020: Finished reading
  • 8 May, 2020: Reviewed