March 2016

In November 2015, the GCHQ Departmental Historian made a rare public appearance as part of the Bletchley Park Presents lecture series. Tony gave a talk titled International Partnerships - Bletchley's Foreign Relations. In this first part of his talk he examined how foreign partnerships became an integral part of British signals intelligence shortly before World War Two.

Although parts of the story are told, the meeting with the Poles in Warsaw in July 1939, and the arrival of the Americans in February 1941, for example, the number of different relationships is greater than many people realise.

The simultaneous management of different levels of relationship with different countries added an often unsuspected level of complexity, and the need gradually to decouple from some relationships as the war in Europe came to an end, needed careful management.

This talk added rich detail to the Bletchley Park story.

Image: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

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