Holiday reading.

[SoundmanJohn]

I've been forced to do a lot of reading recently, due to hanging around hospitals waiting to have my insides looked at  (pictures to follow - or maybe not, given where the camera's going) and through an odd chain of events, I discovered a rather good book. You may have seen that President Clinton's daughter Chelsea got married recently and as part of the ceremony, used a poem called "The Life That I Have" by a chap called Leo Marks. Marks was the son of the owner of the bookshop made famous by Helene Hanff's publlshed correspondence with Frank Doel, one of the shop's specialists, in the book and the film "84 Charing Cross Road" and was a cryptographer during WW2. This much I knew, as I'm a fan of Helene Hanff's writings, but I did not know that Leo Marks had written a book himself, called "Between Silk & Cyanide - A Codemaker's War" in which he details, in a witty and self deprecating way, how he changed the coding procedures of British agents working undercover in occupied Europe and played a large part in a disinformation campaign, both of which which helped to change the course of the war. It's a thick book and I started reading it whilst waiting for my notes to turn up at The Royal Free and by the time I was called in, I'd got through ten chapters, which says something both about the book and about how long it took them to find my notes. Over the next four days, I finished the book and was pretty much gripped throughout. The book can be found on Amazon for not very much money (my copy was an American reprint and was so full of typos that I thought it was some sort of code in itself) and I can highly recommend it. I'm now part-way through Michael Korda's "With Wings Like Eagles", which is a thorough, but rather pedestrian account of the Battle Of Britain. He pays tribute to Len Deighton's definitive work, but covers much of the same ground. Still pretty absorbing, though.

Anyone else been reading good stuff?

Best wishes,

John
(Who might make it to Duxford for September 4th.)

[paul b]

I've been forced to do a lot of reading recently, due to hanging around hospitals waiting to have my insides looked at  (pictures to follow - or maybe not, given where the camera's going) and through an odd chain of events, I discovered a rather good book. You may have seen that President Clinton's daughter Chelsea got married recently and as part of the ceremony, used a poem called "The Life That I Have" by a chap called Leo Marks. Marks was the son of the owner of the bookshop made famous by Helene Hanff's publlshed correspondence with Frank Doel, one of the shop's specialists, in the book and the film "84 Charing Cross Road" and was a cryptographer during WW2. This much I knew, as I'm a fan of Helene Hanff's writings, but I did not know that Leo Marks had written a book himself, called "Between Silk & Cyanide - A Codemaker's War" in which he details, in a witty and self deprecating way, how he changed the coding procedures of British agents working undercover in occupied Europe and played a large part in a disinformation campaign, both of which which helped to change the course of the war. It's a thick book and I started reading it whilst waiting for my notes to turn up at The Royal Free and by the time I was called in, I'd got through ten chapters, which says something both about the book and about how long it took them to find my notes. Over the next four days, I finished the book and was pretty much gripped throughout. The book can be found on Amazon for not very much money (my copy was an American reprint and was so full of typos that I thought it was some sort of code in itself) and I can highly recommend it. I'm now part-way through Michael Korda's "With Wings Like Eagles", which is a thorough, but rather pedestrian account of the Battle Of Britain. He pays tribute to Len Deighton's definitive work, but covers much of the same ground. Still pretty absorbing, though.

Anyone else been reading good stuff?

Best wishes,

John
(Who might make it to Duxford for September 4th.)

         

   Hello John,

          Firstly, I hope what ever the cause of your hospital visits is nothing to unpleasant and is quickly sorted allowing you to get to Duxford.
          Sounds like a very interesting book. Talking of codes and encrypting etc, have you ever visited Bletchley  Park, well worth a visit.  

         Hope to catch up with you at Duxford  

         Regards
          Paul    
          

[SoundmanJohn]

Hello Paul,

I should be OK for Duxford - last chance for me before the next set of tests. Nothing serious to report at the moment, just a pain in ass, so to speak! Are you going on Saturday or Sunday?

I have indeed been to Bletchley - an Audio Engineering Society visit a few years ago, where we taken to see the re-built Colossus running and given the full background by Tony Sale. This was before the place was given a grant and Tony pointed out that if everyone in the UK who used a computer pledged £1 a year to helping keep Bletchley Park open, they wouldn't need a grant. I particularly appreciated the fact that the brilliant GPO engineer Tommy Flowers was effectively told to push off by the powers that be and spent £1,000 of his own money and all of his spare time getting the thing up and running. It does seem sometimes that we won through largely down to a small number of single-minded individuals who ignored their higher-ups and just got on with things. Dowding's endless battles with his bosses springs to mind and most of the Leo Marks book has him working on his own initiative and against the wishes of those further up the chain of command.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took of Colossus at that visit:





Look at all those valves! (Vacuum Tubes to our American friends.)

[smithsg5]

just think of all those little heaters !

[rrmerlin]

First of all, I hope you are well John.  Your remarks about Bletchley reminded me of a great Docudrama produced by NOVA for our  Public Broadcasting System.  It was called "Decoding Nazi Secrets" and I have a copy in VHS NTSC format still.  Two hours long, it tells the story of the gathering of Scientists, Bridge players, crossword puzzle solvers, cryptographers etc from all over the world at Bletchley Park.  They were able to build the Colossus and reproduce the enigma machine.  More important, much of their early code cracking was done in a time-consuming manual method that involved hundreds of people contributing to the final result.  Thanks to their efforts, valuable information about German plans was known in advance without tipping the NAZIS off.  Much credit is given to Alan Turing, a true genius who, sadly, took his own life at the end of WWII.
It is an absorbing two hours of suspense and triumph.  This is one wartime program that my wife did not mind watching with me as she took her GPO supervisor training at Bletchley in 1957.  Because of this program, I became very interested in knowing more about the enigma machine and found one at Fort Huachuca, AZ spy museum and found out there are different models and variants. There is a DVD version of the program and can be found on torrent and other sites.
David

[MikeKippes]

John, more thoughts for your good health.  From across the pond it's truly amazing to see the photos of Colossus and realize its historical significance. 
I had the same reaction to "With Wings Like Eagles" as pretty average.  I found better reading in "Kiwi Spitifre Ace" by Jack Rae who was a squadron mate in N.Z. 485 Squadron along with ML407's Johnnie Houlton, particularly before both went to Malta. It became gripping reading as Rae later became a POW after a forced landing when his Spit's damaged engine seized up over France.
I found "Kiwi Spitifre Ace" to be an easy find on Amazon, but could only find Johnnie Houlton's "Spitifre Strike" in a stroke of luck on eBay.
Looking forward to the Duxford BOB airshow, but I'm watching the BBC news about a possible airport workers' strike at Heathrow.
My best, Mike

[Clive From Canada]

Hi John and fellow supporters.

One of the most interesting books I can recommend is And A Thousand Shall Fall by Murray Peden.

It follows his RCAF career from recruit through pilot training and onto operational flying. It has quite a few funny spots in it of course as well as sadness when some men, can't really call them boys, he trained with and was close to were killed on operations or needlessly during flying training.

There is a part in the book while laying mines at night from a Stirling over the North Sea as part of his operational training his front gunner suddenly screamed for him to pull up. Apparently when the excitement had passed, the reason was that they had flown lower than the mast tops of some fishing boats!! Peden figures the propellors must have been almost touching the surface of the sea and a few feet lower and they would have crashed. He had forgotten to compensate for the barometric pressure and the altimeter wasn't reading correctly.

This isn't a "how I won the war" type of books but a "what happened to me" type. I like these better because it shows a personal touch recollection and doesn't tell the whole history of the campaign.

I've read it many times and whole heartedly recommend it to anyone with an interest in WW II flying as I'm sure much of it also applied to others.

Cheers,
Clive from Canada.

[SoundmanJohn]

Clive,

Thanks for that recommendation. I found the book on my favourite on-line second-hand book-shop, Abe Books and ordered a copy. I look forward to reading it. It looks nice and long!

Best wishes,

John

[Clive From Canada]

Hi John.

I guarantee you won't be disappointed with the book.

Cheers,
Clive from Canada.

[James Wheeler]

Abe Books are indeed superb, I have found a few tricky to get hold of copies through them before now. It is such a clever idea

Johnnie Houlton's book is now winging its way to me from a bookshop in Hereford!

[SoundmanJohn]

Superb indeed, but dangerously addictive: ! I was doing some more research about Tommy Flowers and discovered that his recollections and those of others have just been published in a book - Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers - and found a copy on Abe Books for around £7, rather than the £20 cover price. My credit card can stand £7, so that's another one for the library!

Time for bed - up early in the morning for my last day over here in Galway to try and get some early morning recordings of weirs and waterfalls as the Corrib River empties into the sea. Then there's the opening night of the play I've been working on, which features a larger-than-life size WW1 tank that I'm providing the noises for, along with a lot of other odd sounds. What a strange job I have!

Then it's back to the London for half a day, do the washing, kiss Andrea and get on a train to another town with historic links to ground-breaking technology, Malvern (once home to the Radar Research Establishment.) I'm doing the sound for a play set in Wales during WW2, about a couple of children evacuated to Welsh village and their adventures there. It's called Carrie's War and so far, although I use a recording of Lancasters at the beginning of the show, I haven't found a way to shoe-horn in a Spitfire!

Best wishes to all,

John

[rrmerlin]

Hello again John.  I have seen "Carrie's War" on BBC Masterpiece Theatre.  It was very heartwarming and well done.  Alun Armstrong is one of the principal characters and as usual, outstandanding.  Not sure if you can access this url. 
David
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/carrieswar/

[SoundmanJohn]

David,

This is the third time I've done the show - this is the national tour, it having been on in London last year and having been presented as a children's Christmas show in 2006. And I've managed to sneak ML407 into a scene change! She flies over a group of chaps working in a hayfield and it covers a dull moment where there's not much else happening, other than Eric Coates' "Calling All Workers" theme. It's a nice moment. Here's the website for those who might want to visit.

http://www.carrieswar.com/

Still hoping to be at DX on Sunday, weather permitting.

Best wishes,

John

[SoundmanJohn]

Hi John and fellow supporters.

One of the most interesting books I can recommend is  A Thousand Shall Fall by Murray Peden.

Clive,

The book arrived while I was away and I picked it up just before starting off on another hospital visit for a blood test (my arm's like a pincushion at the moment) and then got on a train for a trip to Derby. A total of three and half hours waiting/travelling and therefore reading time and I'm totally hooked. This is indeed a superb book and, apart from any other aspect, it's made me laugh out loud whilst on public transport; something previously only managed by Terry Pratchett at his best. His description of failing to complete a roll successfully in a Tiger Moth is wonderfully funny and I love Peden's dry sense of humour.

Thanks so much for recommending this book, Clive; it's a total joy.

Best wishes,

John

[MattHunt]

Hi John,


I hope things are OK. At the moment I am reading through the Napoleonic wars, courtesy of Patrick O'Brien but having just finished watching the BBc's dramatisation of First Light I might be re-reading that now.

Best wishes

Matt