The 3 Polish codebreakers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski ‘Il y a du nouveau’ On 26 July 1939, in the Pyry Forest south of Warsaw, Polish cryptologists revealed...
...not happen today, and I rejoice in that change. I think that Major’s remarks identify an important lesson for today’s FCO about diversity: if we exclude different types of people,...
...the Normandy shore - @Wikimedia Commons Seventy years ago today, 130,000 American, British and Canadian troops began the largest seaborne assault ever attempted: Operation NEPTUNE, the assault phase of OVERLORD,...
...today, the term remains in use as shorthand for Russian security and intelligence officers. The Cheka’s symbols were the shield and sword, the first to defend the revolution and the...
...that symbolised their service to the war (Figures 3 and 4); a code of conduct (although this was not uniform across the counties), and faced disciplinary action for misdemeanours.[12] Whilst...
...Using a German code which he knew had been broken by the British, he transmitted the message ‘The British are now running France’. Unsurprisingly, the French intercepted it. In spring...
...arrive and were often written in code in case they were stolen by foreign spies. When his conduct at the 1814 Congress of Vienna was later challenged in Parliament, Castlereagh...
![Extract of the draft note from 2 January 1917 on 10 Downing Street headed paper which reads 'To: The Private Secretary, the Prime Minister has decided, with a view to keeping himself in close touch with the several departments, to establish a ['Secretariat' is crossed out and replaced by 'Department'] in connection with Office of the First Lord of the Treasury. The following gentlemen have been appointed to act as secretaries to the ['First Lord of the Treasury' is crossed out and replaced by 'new Department']](https://history.blog.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/01/edited-1024x753.jpg)
...A hundred years ago today, on 5 January 1917, in the midst of the Great War, an important note was circulated around Whitehall departments. J. T. Davis, private secretary to...
...and policy was channelled. Yet many individuals today do not realise what the Privy Council is and the central role it has in fact played in our nation’s history. This...
Maurice Hankey (1877-1963) deserves to be far better known than he is today as the principal architect of the Cabinet Office in modern British government. It would be wrong to...