Fans of the film "The Imitation Game" will recall Bletchley Park as the home of code-breaking,…read morewhere Alan Turing (alongside nearly 9,000 colleagues) worked to decipher the encrypted messages of the Germans and Japanese in World War II; this included breaking the infamous "Enigma" German coding system.
This is one of the best museum experiences I've ever had. It does a brilliant job of making a highly technical subject accessible and of bringing it to life, with plenty of human interest.
All based in the original buildings, it tells the story of how Bletchley Park was established, and then expanded, as its operations grew during World War II. Rooms are recreated as they would have been in the 1940s, and are beautifully curated to explain how every aspect of the code-breaking operation worked.
This covers not just the code-breakers themselves, but everyone from the linguists, canteen staff and administrators, to the motorcycle messengers who rode to and from the radio stations with intercepted messages, and then on to the Intelligence HQs with the deciphered messages (in all weathers, with all the road signs removed, and with blackouts at night!).
I particularly liked the wall of original memos from the administrative office, which shows the vagaries of the British class system (wanting more typists of the "Roedean school sort"), alongside very modern concerns about staff shortages, and complaining about the food, heating and just about everything else!
Finally, the later exhibits show the development of computers and radio interception, and the implications of the development of AI.
There's a huge amount of personal detail about the people who worked here, including oral histories, letters, and diary entries. A highlight has to be Alan Turing's office, set up as he had it in 1944. Then there are the exhibits explaining how code-breaking works in general, and how the Enigma Code itself was broken, with a replica of one of the famous "Bombe" machines that helped speed the code-breaking. (If you can work out how it works, you're better than me!)
But equally important was the work of turning the messages into useful military intelligence, and in turn, using that knowledge to develop counter-intelligence, which played a vital role in an early example of disinformation.
On our visit, there were lots of guides, some of whom had worked there (one lovely lady was 96), but all were delightfully helpful, very enthusiastic and incredibly knowledgeable.
We spent 5 hours there, and still didn't see everything, but the good news is that tickets are valid for return visits for a year. As I said, this is one of the best curated museums I've ever visited. We had a wonderful day out.
On a practical level, the museum is less than 10 minutes' walk from Bletchley railway station, but there is a decent-sized car park too. The huge site has been made fully accessible for wheelchair users, and there are plenty of toilets. There are two cafes (pricey but okay) and a tea hut; and a shop, selling souvenirs and generous selection of books about WWII and code-breaking more generally.
