Top Secret Ultra

Breaking Luftwaffe Ciphers at Bletchley Park

Peter Calvocoressi, Joel Greenberg

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Paperback

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English

Greenhill Books
01 May 2025

History; Military history

Shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, a young Peter Calvocoressi was serving in the Ministry of Economic Warfare, his role largely consisting of reviewing shipping manifests day in day out. In 1940, he decided to volunteer for the War Office but was turned away on account of a recently-sustained head injury. The note on his file? ""No good for anything not even intelligence. In spite of this, Calvocoressi was able to apply to the Air Ministry, was commissioned in RAF intelligence and, by early 1941, found himself at Bletchley Park.

Calvocoressi was assigned to a section of Bletchley dealing with Luftwaffe Ultra intelligence where as deputy head and, from 1944, as head he spent the rest of the war translating and interpreting decrypted Enigma signals.

The codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946, however all information about this wartime enterprise was classified and remained a secret until the mid-1970s, after which Calvocoressi recounted his experiences at Bletchley in Top Secret Ultra, published in 1980. This comprehensive new edition of Calvocoressi's book features exciting new material from his son David and from renowned historian and author (specialising in signals intelligence) Dr Joel Greenberg. This is required reading for anybody with an interest in this utterly and indisputably fascinating aspect of the Allied war effort during World War II.

AUTHOR: Peter Calvocoressi was born in Karachi, British India in 1912 before moving to England where he grew up, attending Eton and then Oxford University. During World War II, he worked as an intelligence analyst at Bletchley Park. After the war, Calvocoressi's impressive career saw him working as a lawyer, a politician, a publisher, an academic, a journalist, an author and an historian. He died in Dorset in 2010 at the age of 97.

By: Peter Calvocoressi
Introduction by: Joel Greenberg
Imprint: Greenhill Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781805001256
ISBN 10: 1805001256
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 01 May 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified

Peter Calvocoressi was born in Karachi, British India in 1912 before moving to England where he grew up, attending Eton and then Oxford University. During World War II, he worked as an intelligence analyst at Bletchley Park. After the war, Calvocoressi’s impressive career saw him working as a lawyer, a politician, a publisher, an academic, a journalist, an author and an historian. He died in Dorset in 2010 at the age of 97. Peter Calvocoressi was born in Karachi, British India in 1912 before moving to England where he grew up, attending Eton and then Oxford University. During World War II, he worked as an intelligence analyst at Bletchley Park. After the war, Calvocoressi’s impressive career saw him working as a lawyer, a politician, a publisher, an academic, a journalist, an author and an historian. He died in Dorset in 2010 at the age of 97. Joel Greenberg is a Canadian author and historian living in the UK who researches and writes about signals intelligence and its impact on two world wars. He is has written the authorised biographies of two key figures in the story of signals intelligence, Gordon Welchman and Alastair Denniston. The Welchman book, Gordon Welchman, Bletchley Park’s Architect of Ultra Intelligence, is the basis of a joint BBC/Smithsonian Network 2015 documentary about Welchman –The Forgotten Genius of Bletchley Park.. The Denniston book, Alastair Denniston, Code-breaking from Room 40 to Berkeley Street and the Birth of GCHQ, is both a biography and an account of signals intelligence from its early development to the birth of GCHQ. Denniston was the first Head of GCHQ and the book was launched at its headquarters on 7 September 2017 in honour of him.