BRIEFING ROOM
THURSDAY 7 September was a special day at the Government Communications Headquarters in Cheltenham. For it was the setting for the launch of a new biography of the man who was the first head of Britain’s key signals information gathering organisation, Alastair Denniston. The launch took place in GCHQ’s museum which had been adorned with artefacts from his intriguing life and was attended by members of Alastair Denniston’s family including his niece and goddaughter Libby Buchanan and his grandchildren, as well as senior representatives from Bletchley Park and GCHQ.
Written by Dr Joel Greenberg, Alastair Denniston: Code-Breaking from Room 40 to Berkeley Street and the Birth of GCHQ, charts the career of a man still held in the highest esteem at GCHQ. (Frontline Books, ISBN 978-1526709127)
On the outbreak of war in 1914, naval coastal wireless stations began to intercept more and more communications from the Imperial German Navy. These messages were sent to the Admiralty in London, where a team under Sir Alfred Ewing, the Director of Naval Education, was tasked with deciphering them. At that time, Alastair Denniston was teaching French and German at Osborne Royal Navy College. As a German l…
