On 27 November 1943, Guy Liddell, a senior MI5 officer recorded a story about Winston Churchill.

(Source TNA KV4/192)

Indeed. I have no idea how much thought was given to the balance between routine physical integrity and emergency disintegratibility of paper-based crypto.

I have no doubt that the codebooks and keymat on punched tape HMS Coventry were perceived to be a potential target of opportunity.

One Time Pad for the encryption of comms between South Georgia and the Governor of the Falkland Islands dumped in the sea in 1982 at the time of the Argentine invasion and recovered some weeks later.

I showed this to the (then) Prince of Wales in 2019. It's a one time pad which was dumped into the sea in 1982 in South Georgia, and recovered some weeks later. The sea hadn't done any real damage. The crypto gear on HMS Coventry was rather more sensitive.

It certainly seems to be legit - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operati... - but I don't know anything further about the specifics. There was a real need to recover the material from the sea if possible.

How you maintain Communications Security in the heat of battle? A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at the Battle of the North Cape and concludes that leaving it pragmatically to the people on the spot may be the most sensible approach.

Thanks.

Thanks again. This is for my daughter who wants an overview before getting too deep into detail.

Thanks, Martin

Does anybody know of a reasonable documentary about the Nuremberg process (apart from episode 25 of The World at War)?

With you … again, sadly.

Paging @jockbruce.bsky.social whom I've been nagging in this context for some years.

*A* Censored History of AA-83 😉

+1 ♥️ for the envoi.

Contagious Laughter (@contagiouslaughter.official) on Threads Following a ban on using animals for entertainment, the Prime Minister of Denmark explains a complication that arose when the state subsequently had to purchase four elephants from the circus. 😂 funny...

From Threads. www.threads.com/@contagiousl... Animal welfare meets immigration policy.

Out to lunch at a pub today and the server asked what drinks people wanted. One asked for Chardonnay and was told 'We don't have any Chardonnay but our house wine is made from the same grape'. 'OK. I'll have that then '

Excellent review!

Thanks.

Thanks, Mark

I've had an article published in Diplomacy & Statecraft: 'Behind the Enigma: How GCHQ's Authorised History Appeared'.

The first 50 people to click on the link get a copy for free!

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BCZTB...

It's (still!) hypothetical but I'd guess that the organisation would be fundamentally reformed from above leaving the ethical middle- and lower-level staff to accept the new reality or move on. Their ethical product wouldn't get through the new filter at the top.

I think if a country was democratically backsliding, a reasonably apolitical intelligence agency would be the first thing to be undemocratically backslid into following the party line.

I explore need-to-know again in a post at www.siginthistorian.blogspot.com looking at an Official Secrets Act case in which a clear Sigint connection was ignored because the investigators had no idea it existed.

No. 'The School', maybe, just as GCHQ people today talk about 'The Department ' or (perhaps older, retired, people) 'The Office'. You'll sometimes see complicated 'Golf, Cheese and Chess Society' formations, but I've never seen them in anything contemporary and they aren't things people say.

I was surprised that it was written by a Norwegian.

Did Quex ever think he was subordinate to the Foreign Secretary?

Thanks, Frode.

How good is 'I was there' as a guarantee of historical memory? Not, perhaps, as good as it might seem. A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at records and memory.

Sid James's nephew.

To keep traffic flowing on a busy road in Cheltenham the council has marked approved parking spaces as half on the road and half on the pavement.

How to sort out parking on busy roads: this is what our council has done.