The real story of how Enigma was broken - Sir Dermot Turing

A virtual talk by Sir Dermot Turing.

Surely Enigma was broken by the British at Bletchley Park? The real story begins much earlier, in December, 1932. In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French spymaster photographs secret documents – operating instructions of a new cipher machine, Enigma. A few weeks later a mathematician in Warsaw begins to decipher the coded communications of the Third Reich and lay the foundations for the famous operation at Bletchley Park. In this illustrated talk Dermot Turing explains the international alliance which set the Bletchley Park codebreakers on the path to the British Bombe, as seen at The National Museum of Computing.

Dermot Turing is the acclaimed author of Prof: Alan Turing Decoded, a biography of his famous uncle, The Story of Computing, and most recently the award-winning X, Y and Z – the real story of how Enigma was broken. His new book, a reappraisal of Alan Turing’s legacy, Reflections of Alan Turing, is published on 22 April He began writing in 2014 after a career in law. Dermot worked for the Government Legal Service and then the international law firm Clifford Chance, where he was a partner until 2014. He is a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, Oxford.

This Illustrated talk last approximately 40 minutes, followed by a 20 minute Q&A session.

Recorded 7th April 2021.