Tony Comer

… there's an awful lot of creative writing: imagined conversations and a neatness you don't get in real life. Tiltman *was* a fan; Marks *did* write poem codes; the Dutch Resistance was shamefully treated.

But it's a 'must read', perhaps the perfect introduction to cryptology for 14+ teens. (2/2)

I refuse to comment on that bl**dy pigeon: it blighted a couple of months of my life!

The Leo Marks book is an excellent read, and has brought more than one person to cryptanalysis as a career. It has a solid and historical foundation, but (you were expecting a 'but') ... (1/2)

It's easy to overclassify and it's easy to be nervous about release. An illustration of this point in a new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com

It's you he'll bother, over there. He'll have been watching Clarkson's farm.

So it's just a £38 rosé?

A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at what can happen when two opposing sides are using the same cryptosystems.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4437... shows the news that has provoked so much comment. Why it has happened is anybody's guess.

Lucky old Cumbria.

RAF A400M a bit near my house.

RAF A400M ZM416 (c/s NAPER60) being used to teach pilots how to fly at 600 ft. I assume they have the aircon switched on!

Good description of Henry VIII but he is sadly not unique in terms of rufism and finiscampeism.

… José Ramón Soler …

Can you read Spanish? Soldados sin Rostro by José Ramón Solder and Francisco Javier López-Brea looks in detail at intelligence and cryptology on both sides.

Royal beekeeper informs Buckingham Palace bees that the Queen has died The palace has five beehives, each containing around 20,000 bees

www.independent.co.uk/life-style/r...

If there's hot tea in that mug, the chocolate at the ends is going to melt.

Beaver! Yummy … urgh.

More likely the original Italian Job.

Another superb piece by Gill - how many intelligence historians could follow their paper at a conference with a turn?

This is a gift that keep on giving: if your crypt security is good enough, why does it matter whether your transmission is on a civil or a military system? I know the early 1960s answer, and here it's axiomatic: 'Thou shalt not give the enemy material to play with'. Satcom is super HF, but no more.

I think the idea that you use commercial systems for admin and routine operational traffic, and save the military system for higher level messages, possibly indicates an author who is a theoretician rather than an experienced comms practitioner.

I tink it's really interesting that at this point they are describing requirements for deployable Satcom systems. SNR and capacity are not issues while survivability is. Comsec is a given, but security against TA isn't: I think this is the first time I've seen it stated as a top level requirement.

I've never seen any contemporary references to Alan Turing as Dr Turing - he's always Mr A M Turing.

An excellent thread!

Many happy returns!

Yes, more or less.

Mr and Mrs Across the Road said the same to Mr Three Doors Down. And then one autumn a tree in our garden shed leaves just as the wind blew towards her from ours. 'Stop it from doing that! We don't want your leaves.' 'You don't get autumn', I said, in the last conversation we had for four months.

Stamp honouring Bill Tutte for VE 80

Excellent news that Bill Tutte is being commemorated on a VE-80 stamp. What a pity, however, that the Post Office doesn't seem to know that 'codebreak' isn't a verb and that codes and ciphers are different. If only there was a national agency that they could have approached for advice ... errr ...

I've nothing to hand, but memory tells me that Eric Jones (Travis's eventual successor as Director GCHQ) was in DC at this point negotiating with the US.

Hi Bill. I'm confident that this is signed by 'C', Sir Stewart Menzies.

He is an excellent source for details of the deployment of Army Y units 1939-45.

Thanks for explaining.

As for damp squibs, Cardinal Richelieu famously said all of eg Monday's prayers at 11.00pm then all of Tuesday's at 00.01am to make good use of his time.