Thoughts on Bletchley Park

I visited Bletchley Park again this week and again was left with the impression that it misses an opportunity to explain itself.

There have been press campaigns, fundraising, petitions, even “donate a day’s salary” for Bletchley Park, and they’ve certainly come a long way and done a lot to preserve it, but when you get there it all seems a bit shambolic. I appreciate that gives some of the charm, but given a bigger budget I suspect they could really bring it alive.

When you Visit Today

  1. You’re greeted at the gate by a man in a booth who opens the barrier and gives you a ticket to redeem, or possibly pay for, later. I couldn’t work it out.
  2. Find your way to the peach melba coloured building where they sign you up for a year’s season ticket, ask you about gift-aid, make you sign things, tell you in person where everything is and send you on your way. Very helpful and friendly. Perhaps not very efficient.
  3. They suggest you watch the orientation film. Perhaps this is the key to the experience. I haven’t seen it, so all my observations here may be irrelevant.
  4. I haven’t yet been offered an audio handset, and I’ve no idea if it would enhance the experience or not. They’re simply not promoted.
  5. You check out the museum exhibits - a collection of posters, artefacts and wordy information posters which don’t quite make sense yet. Slightly lacking narrative and a bit keen to explain in epic detail for this stage in the visit.
  6. Rush over to a guided tour in the main house, grab a cup of tea in Hut 4 first. They need some metal cups with enamel rims.
  7. Listen to an old boy digress for 20 minutes about Queen Elizabeth or sit open-mouthed as he dives headlong into rotor and plugboard settings on an Enigma which leaves most people bemused within the first 5 minutes.
  8. Visit the Bombe, understand where it fits in and that Colossus had nothing to do with Enigma. Get an inkling of what’s going on.
  9. Visit the Colossus and be impressed, but still not entirely sure what it did.
  10. Notice that there’s a computer museum around the corner, spend a happy hour pointing at the old computers.

If it’s simply a heritage architecture and artefact tour then perhaps it’s okay as it is, but if the aim is to explain what they did here and some of the basics of code-breaking to a wide audience they’re going to have to meet us in the middle somewhere.

The anecdotes which are spilled out during the tour are very good and probably the easiest parts to grasp. Even if you were flummoxed by the lightning explanation of the Engima machine, it’s easy to remember things like the London Symphony Orchestra playing German favourites just before they transmit their radio messages to program the enemy operators’ brains into giving predictable sequences. Or not taking action despite knowing it would involve loss of life because doing something would make it obvious that we had broken Enigma. The British love mistakes.

On the other end of the spectrum the museum explains in great detail some of the restoration work involved in an almost self-referential effort to show you how far they’ve come. Undoubtedly having a Bombe (both real and model) and a Colossus give something tangible, well done chaps, but it’s in context that they come alive. “The Making of…” is usually a DVD extra for a reason.

There is no narrative unless you go on the guided tour. Even then the narrative is filled with waffle. The old boys give it some authenticity, character and humour definitely, but there is no script, no curriculum, just a number of waypoints. Watching the bemused wives, yawning fidgeting children and strained looks as people tried to piece it all together I felt the opportunity to engage and involve them slipping away.

Assuming some people go there aware of Enigma, knowing it has something to do with boffins-in-the-war and code-breaking-top-secret-and-all-that-old-bean-pip-pip, a bit of an explanation of the order of events would be helpful. 

That has the potential to be very dry, but could be implemented in an accessible way. Instead of leaving you at the beginning, with an orientation film in a room like a lecture theatre, turn it into a briefing room. God knows they have enough characters working on site, surely they’d be able to find one who can camp it up a bit.

  1. You arrive at the gate and you’re each given a laminated card with some gibberish on it as if you were a despatch rider with a radio intercept.
  2. After parking you make your way to the reception/ticket office where you do the admin. For added authenticity they could give you a “chit”.
  3. Then you get a briefing (ie. orientation film, context, etc.) and you’re assigned orders to take the card to the correct hut.
  4. Follow the process of the code-breaking loosely through transcription, cribs, the Bombe, rotor settings, and ultimately decoding the message onto a teletype (or some kind of virtual teletype). 
  5. Scan a barcode on your card and see your unique message from the radio intercept you brought in. Read and interpret the message. It could be an order to invade France or it could be a laundry list.
  6. See how your piece of information fitted into the war machine. Save some lives. End some others. Steal some Nazi underpants.

All through this process refer to the people involved, the stories, the secrecy, the separation of responsibilities and the possibility that you might fail to decode things or be shut down due to lack of understanding.

This is all, of course, with the caveat that the Heritage Lottery Fund money has now been awarded and there are plans to improve the experience.  As this develops I hope they remember to bring us into their world rather than just point at things.