Asa Briggs
FRONTLINE BOOKS 2011, 256 PAGES
PRICE £19.99 (HARDBACK) ISBN 978-1-84832-615-6
Asa Briggs, the eminent historian, has written this book about his memories of his time as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park, or BP as it was known to those who worked there, during the years 1943 to 1945. He has done so for three reasons he says. First, he is a survivor (he was 90 in May 2011) and regards it as his duty to contribute a personal memoir to the collection of Bletchley Park material. Second, as a professional historian he sees it as important not only to record his own experiences, but also to review what others, most of whom are not professional historians, have written. Third, the questions he’s asked most often these days are about his time at Bletchley Park, and, in particular, why did a historian ever work there at all.
He says a little about his time before joining and after leaving Bletchley Park, and includes a final chapter on the history of the Bletchley Park Trust. Most of the book covers his time at BP though, and includes several photographs, not only of people, but buildings, workrooms, machines (Enigma, Tunny, Colossus), concert programmes and even menus!
The book consists primarily of his descriptions of and comments on many of the people he came across while at BP, and also of those he came across later who had been at BP. He tells of the Herival Tip, a method devised by John Herival that dramatically narrowed down the likely number of ring settings on the Enigma machine that the German operators might employ. He mentions the system of perforated sheets used by Dilly Knox, and invented by the Poles, for breaking the Enigma codes. However, these, and other methods mentioned, are described only in very general terms and one should not expect to obtain any detail about them from these accounts.
The book contains no descriptions of how any of the code-breaking machines or methods worked in any sort of detail. We don’t even learn what Briggs actually did there, apart from the somewhat unspecific fact that he was involved in code-breaking! It is primarily a book of comments about the people involved. Its appeal is therefore largely to those enthusiasts who collect and absorb all things related to BP. It is unlikely to convert a non-enthusiast to an enthusiast, and contains nothing for the technically minded.
Alan Stevens CMath FIMA
Mathematics Today February 2012
