Bletchley Park commander not the 'baddy' he is in 'The Imitation Game' (fwd)

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Letters to The Telegraph
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Thursday 27 November 2014


The man who recruited Bletchley’s codebreakers
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SIR – While the much-acclaimed film The Imitation Game rightly 
acknowledges Alan Turing’s vital role in the war effort, it is sad that it 
does so by taking a side-swipe at Commander Alastair Denniston, portraying 
him as a mere hindrance to Turing’s work.

We, his descendants, prefer to remember his extraordinary achievements in 
the First and Second World War, as well as his unstinting devotion to 
Britain’s security for more than 30 years. Cdr Denniston was one of the 
founding fathers of Bletchley Park. On his final visit to Poland in the 
summer of 1939, he was briefed by Polish mathematicians on the electrical 
equipment they had developed to break the German cipher machine, Enigma. 
The Enigma machine that Denniston took back to Bletchley ultimately 
allowed Britain to read the German High Command’s coded instructions. Such 
was the secrecy surrounding his work that his retirement in 1945, and 
death in 1961, passed virtually unnoticed, and he remains the only former 
head of GC&CS ( the precursor to the intelligence agency GCHQ ) never to 
have been awarded a knighthood.

It was he who recruited Turing and many other leading mathematicians and 
linguists to Bletchley, where he fostered an environment that enabled 
these brilliant but unmanageable individuals to break the Enigma codes. 
The GCHQ of today owes much to the foundation he created there.

Nick Denniston
Dr Susanna Everitt
Libby Buchanan
Judith Finch
Simon Finch
Alison Finch
Hilary Greenman
Candida Connolly
Clifton-upon-Teme, Worcestershire 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/11256138/Letters-State-schools-suffer-because-the-most-demanding-parents-go-independent.html

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26 Nov 2014

Bletchley Park commander not the 'baddy' he is in 'The Imitation Game', 
family say


Cdr Alastair Denniston was not a 'hectoring character’ and the Alan Turing 
film starring Benedict Cumberbatch is a sideswipe at his memory, his 
grandchildren say

The grandchildren of a Bletchley Park commander depicted in the film The 
Imitation Game have spoken of their dismay as they claim he was portrayed 
as a “baddy” on screen.

The family of Cdr Alastair Denniston claims the film takes an “unwarranted 
sideswipe” at his memory, showing him to be a “hectoring character” who 
hinders the work of Alan Turing, the codebreaker and computer science 
pioneer played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

In real life, relatives say, he was a “humble” man devoted to his work, 
and they want his true contribution to the war effort to be recognised.

Denniston, who died in 1961, was a cryptologist during the First World 
War. He continued in the Government Code and Cypher School — the 
forerunner of GCHQ — afterwards and moved his team to Bletchley Park at 
the outbreak of the Second World War.

There, he was responsible for hiring the mathematicians who went on to 
crack the Enigma code, including Turing.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11256888/Bletchley-Park-commander-not-the-baddy-he-is-in-The-Imitation-Game-family-say.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03119/PX11371353wa_bletc_3119528b.jpg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/11256295/Secret-histories-of-Bletchley-Park.html


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11229240/The-Imitation-Game-who-were-the-real-Bletchley-Park-codebreakers.html