Footsteps of the fallen

Dilly and the Dormouse - the mysterious world of Room 40


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In January 1917, a  German encrypted message was intercepted by a small relay station in Cornwall and passed to the secretive world of the code breakers inhabiting the dingy Room 40 in the Admiralty building in London's Whitehall.

In the room were some of the finest minds in England, led by the enigmatic and charismatic Oxbridge scholar Albert "Dilly" Knox.  The team, including a man known as "The Dormouse" and a cake-loving Vicar called Monty, decrypted the message, and its 166-word content was political and diplomatic dynamite, that changed the entire course of the Great War.

Known to this day as The Zimmerman Telegramme, the explosive contents caused the previously neutral United States to join the war on the side of the Allies.   What did the telegramme say? How did the British intercept it, and why did the contents change the course of World War One?  Find out in this latest podcast, where we look at the single greatest intelligence triumph of the First World War. 


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Footsteps of the fallenBy Matt Dixon