I had a great day yesterday.
Following on from Google’s wonderful offer of $100,000 towards the purchase of the Turing papers (currently still ongoing) I yesterday took Peter Barron, Director of External Relations at Google up to Bletchley Park. We had a really good meeting with Simon Greenish, Director of Bletchley Park and Kelsey Griffin, Director of Operations at Bletchley Park followed by a tour of the site. I have done the tour many times now, but there are *so* many interesting things to see there that I always thoroughly enjoy it.
One moment during the meeting that made us all laugh was when discussing the massive increase in visitor numbers to Bletchley Park over the last few years both Simon Greenish and Kelsey Griffin pointed to me and said “It’s all your fault!!” ;)) I’m very happy to be blamed for that :))
I’m now *very* optimistic about Google now supporting Bletchley Park….watch this space for details…..
As a quick aside: Bletchley Park makes a great day trip from London. Trains from Euston take only 36 minutes and Bletchley Park is 2 minutes walk from Bletchley Station. Entrance including an annual pass to Bletchley Park is only £10. If you are at all geeky and/or interested in history, especially WW2, you will love it. Highly recommended. Do comment here if you have any questions.
Photos here are in order: all of us in the Mansion House Ballroom; Kelsey Griffin outside a hut; me, Peter Barron from Google and Simon Greenish in front of the iconic Hut 6; the tubes used to pass messages between huts at in Bletchley’s codebreaking days; the original Bombe rooms; the place where the first codebreak happened; the housing estate built on land sold off, formerly part of the Bletchley Park site; the Turing Bombe rebuild; a despatch motorbike from WW@; a sexy codebreaking machine; Bomber Command; Alan Turing’s office in Hut 8; the brave men who captured Enigma documentation from a Uboat during WW2; Bletchley Park darts team; Bletchley Park Mansion House; Block C and the exit entrance; Peter Barron and I in front of Block C.