X, Y and Z

December, 1932 In the bathroom of a Belgian hotel, a French spymaster photographs top-secret documents - the operating instructions of the cipher machine, Enigma. A few weeks later a mathematician in Warsaw begins to decipher the coded communications of the Third Reich and lays the foundations for the code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. The co-operation between France, Britain and Poland is given the cover-name 'X, Y & Z'. December, 1942 It is the middle of World War Two. The Polish code-breakers have risked their lives to continue their work inside Vichy France, even as an uncertain future faces their homeland. Now they are on the run from the Gestapo. People who know the Enigma secret are not supposed to be in the combat zone, so MI6 devises a plan to exfiltrate them. If it goes wrong, if they are caught, the consequences could be catastrophic for the Allies. Based on original research and newly released documents, X, Y & Z is the exhilarating story of those who risked their lives to protect the greatest secret of World War Two.

Auteur

Dermot Turing is the author of Prof, the acclaimed biography of Alan Turing. He spent his career in the legal profession after graduating from Cambridge and Oxford, and is a trustee of Bletchley Park. He has extensive knowledge of World War II code-breaking and is a regular presenter at major cryptology events, most recently presenting at the US National Security Agency's Center for Cryptologic History. He lives in St Albans.

Texte du rabat

It's common knowledge that the Enigma cipher was broken at Bletchley Park, but less is known of the background: an exhilarating spy story of secret documents smuggled across borders, hair-raising escapes, Gestapo interrogations and betrayals.

At the heart of it is the decisive role of Polish mathematicians and French spymasters who helped Britain's codebreakers change the course of the Second World War. X, Y & Z is the real story of how Enigma was broken.