Behind the enigma: the authorised history of GCHQ, Britain´s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency

Cover -- Half-title Page -- Title Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- 1 The Origins of Modern British Sigint, 1844-1914 -- Comint and Empire -- Victorian Intelligence and the Information Revolution -- The Edwardian Roots of British Sigint -- Cryptography -- The Comint Revolution -- 2 Britain and the Birth of Signals Intelligence, 1914-18 -- The Emergence of Sigint -- The Emergence of Comint -- Sigint at Sea -- Military Sigint -- Blockade and Diplomatic Comint -- Siginters -- Women Siginters -- Sigint Alliances -- Sigint and British Victory -- 3 Whitehall's Black Chamber: British Cryptology and the Government Code & -- Cypher School, 1919-39 -- The Politics of Sigint -- Sigint Between the Wars -- The Government Code & -- Cypher School -- Interwar Siginters -- Military Sigint -- Defence -- Attack -- Codebreaking -- 4 Cryptanalysis and British Foreign Policy, 1919-39 -- Comint and Naval Arms Limitation, 1921-36 -- Judging the Effect of Diplomatic Comint -- Comint and British Policy in the Middle East, 1919-23 -- Conspiracies and Conspirators: 1919-22 -- The Chanak Crisis -- Comint at Chanak -- Lausanne and Later -- Comint and the Main Enemy, 1919-39 -- Intelligence, Appeasement and the Road to War, 1933-39 -- The Anti-Comintern Pact -- Comint and Strategy -- Conclusions -- 5 Bletchley -- Decline of a Black Chamber -- The Road to Bletchley Park -- The Limits to Preadaptation -- Diversity and Union -- The Turing Test -- Craft to Industry -- The Struggle for Sigint -- Sigint and Intelligence -- A Crisis in Comint -- The Problem of the Trinity -- Acting on Intelligence -- 6 Ultra and the Second World War, 1939-45 -- Axis Swords, British Shield -- The Turning Point -- Ultra and Its Enemies -- Sigint and Strike Warfare -- Sigint at Sea, 1940-43 -- Ultra and the Mediterranean Strategy -- Stormy Weather -- Tsunami.

For a hundred years GCHQ--Government Communications Headquarters--has been at the forefront of British secret statecraft. Born out of the need to support military operations in the First World War, and fought over ever since, today it is the UK's biggest intelligence, security and cyber agency and a powerful tool of the British state. Based on unprecedented access to documents in GCHQ's archive, many of them hitherto classified, this is the first book to authoritatively explain the entire history of one of the world's most potent intelligence agencies