Behind the veil of secrecy: GCHQ emerges from the shadows

Is it ever possible to truly see inside the heart of another? To divine hidden intentions and the darkest of thoughts? For a long time — before we all became sourly aware of our own computers spying on us like HAL 9000, and flashing ads for haemorrhoid ointments — this godlike omniscience was ascribed to the secret listeners at GCHQ. Above all other intelligence agencies it held a special place in the imaginations of urban paranoiacs. The organisation itself nurtured this sinister reputation by its insistence upon remaining deep in the shadows, even as its siblings MI5 and MI6 boldly came out. Not all that many years ago, simply publishing the initials GCHQ could invite grief.

Yet this intense secrecy, even the denial of its own existence, also obscured the organisation’s many flashing moments of brilliance. For decades nobody was allowed to know that this was an institute that had helped to shorten the second world war, saving uncountable lives; had led directly to the development of the computer; had formed an extraordinary, world-leading and (to this day) enduringly equal intelligence partnership with the US; and whose sometimes eccentric operatives had achieved wild mathematical feats that had never before been imagined.

The modesty has now been fully cast aside: this is the first officially authorised history of Government Communications Headquarters. The author is an academic specialist in the field. The weight of expectation — after 100-odd years of implacable silence — is obviously immense. Although the archives in that modern Cheltenham doughnut HQ are apparently not as complete as one would imagine (oh, indeed?), the story of the codebreakers is in fact a parallel history of the entire 20th century.