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...
...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...
...India. The Russians were conscious of British sensitivities with regards to any country bordering India. Russia had built railway lines up to the border with Afghanistan. The British Government feared...
...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,...
...Middle East. The first attempt to settle the fate of the defeated Ottoman Empire had been worked out 3 years earlier, in Paris. Like their German allies, so the Ottoman...
...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...
...the Food Production Department in March 1917, and worked with the Women’s Section of the National Service Department (which oversaw recruiting). Miss Meriel Talbot – previously the first Woman Inspector...
...was a divorced woman, who obviously liked luxury (she had ten trunks of luggage with her when she was arrested), her act was considered highly sexual. She was a talented...
![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-e1483652073427.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...