Winston Churchill was fully aware of the importance of the Bletchley decipherments, and on September 6, 1941, he visited the codebreakers. On meeting some of the cryptanalysts, he was surprised by the bizarre mixture of people who were providing him with such valuable information; in addition to the mathematicians and linguists, there was an authority on porcelain, a curator from the Prague Museum, the British chess champion and numerous bridge experts. Churchill muttered to Sir Stewart Menzies, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, “I told you to leave no stone unturned, but I didn’t
...more

