Fwd: BOOK : "THE SPIES OF WINTER" - the team that bravely decoded secret Soviet messages

Thursday 22 September 2016

The WWII snoops who took on the Russians :
The team that bravely decoded secret Soviet messages
----------------------------------------------------

- Code-breakers helped crack the Enigma code during World War Two
- After war they were moved to a new HQ in a dreary London suburb
- They created a machine so Churchill and Roosevelt could talk
   privately


- "THE SPIES OF WINTER"
   ---------------------
   by Sinclair McKay
   Aurum Press
   £20

It says a lot about the general mood of paranoia in the early Fifties
that the British and U.S. security services set up a codebreaking
organisation without informing either the Prime Minister or the U.S.
President.

The only problem was that the 'Venona Project', as it was known, was so
secret that no one dared use it — for fear of alerting their enemies to
the fact that their codes had been broken.

When the War ended in 1945 there were plenty of people who assumed that
the codebreakers had had their day, but as Sinclair McKay reveals, quite
the reverse proved to be the case.

The need for snooping on your enemies — and quite often on your friends
— was stronger than ever.

Nonetheless, the codebreakers themselves faced an uncertain future.

Bletchley Park, the centre of Britain’s wartime codebreaking operations,
was soon closed down — the ‘bombes’ that had been built to help decipher
the Enigma code were dismantled, the well brought-up young ladies who
comprised a large portion of its workforce despatched back to London.

Much to the annoyance of those who were kept on, their new HQ was in the
dreary London suburb of Eastcote. One codebreaker, expecting to find
another ‘nice old country house’, was appalled to be confronted by ‘a
Soviet-style correction camp’.

Eastcote may have been festooned with barbed wire, but security was
astonishingly lax — local schoolchildren used to climb in through a hole
in the wall and steal top secret equipment.

The codebreakers who worked there now had a new enemy — the Russians.
Much of their time was taken up with decoding secret Soviet messages,
gleaning information that first put them on the trail of the spies
Philby, Burgess and Maclean....


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-3803024/The-WWII-snoops-took-Russians-team-bravely-decoding-secret-Soviet-messages.html

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/09/22/22/38B2DB0700000578-3803024-image-a-168_1474579726427.jpg

http://books.telegraph.co.uk/Product/Sinclair-McKay/The-Spies-of-Winter--The-GCHQ-Codebreakers-Who-Fought-the-Cold-War/19352857

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/14751234.East_End_author_is_delving_into_the_minds_of_the_Cold_War_codebreakers/

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/14751234.East_End_author_is_delving_into_the_minds_of_the_Cold_War_codebreakers/

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/from-hot-war-to-cold-war-gchq/

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The Spies of Winter :
The GCHQ codebreakers who fought the Cold War
---------------------------------------------
by Sinclair McKay

Product details
---------------
     Hardcover
     352 pages
     Publisher : Aurum Press Ltd
     01 Sept. 2016
     ISBN-10 : 1781312974
     ISBN-13 : 978-1781312971
     Product Dimensions : 24.2 x 3.3 x 16.6 cm

ollowing on from the enormous success of his bestseller, The Secret Life
of Bletchley Park, renowned author Sinclair McKay uncovers the story of
what happened after the end of the Second World War.

Once victory was declared, many of the individuals who had achieved the
seemingly impossible at Bletchley Park by cracking the impenetrable
Enigma codes and giving the Allies an invaluable insight directly into
the Nazi war machine, moved on to GCHQ. This was the British
government’s new facility established to fight a different, but no less
formidable foe – Stalin and the KGB.

Fascinating and insightful revelations from deep within the archives of
this secret organisation reveal the story of the tumultuous early years
of GCHQ as it navigated its way through an era of double agents,
deception and betrayals. From the defection of the Cambridge Five and
the treachery of the atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs, to the collapse of
the British Empire, the ascension of Chairman Mao and the emergence of
the US as a superpower, McKay deftly explores the impact these events
had on the fledgling organisation.

During the years of the Cold War the men and women of GCHQ penetrated
Soviet encryptions and gathered crucial intelligence from all over the
world. The Spies of Winter tells the story of the codebreakers
themselves and how they used new technology to expand the horizons of
cryptography in order to defend the nation and maintain the fragile
peace in a world now under the shadow of nuclear holocaust.

Review
------
‘It is a neglected period in popular history and McKay does well to
bring it to life...a readable canter over the ground for anyone
unfamiliar with one of the important ways in which the second world war
shaped — and continues to shape — our modern world’
( The Spectator 2016-09-09 )

About the Author
----------------
SINCLAIR MCKAY is the bestselling author of 'The Secret Life of
Bletchley Park', 'The Lost World of Bletchley Park', 'The Secret Life of
Fighter Command' and 'The Secret Listeners' for Aurum, as well as
histories of Hammer films, the James Bond films and the pastime of
rambling. He lives in London.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spies-Winter-GCHQ-codebreakers-fought/dp/1781312974

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/515TeZlPCuL.jpg

https://player.fm/series/dan-snows-history-hit-106527/the-spies-of-winter-the-gchq-codebreakers-who-fought-the-cold-war-sinclair-mckay