Long time listener, first time caller.

Growing up in England in the 70s I was strongly influenced by a British TV history of WWII called “The World at War” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_at_War – some of you may be familiar with it. It pretty much remains the definitive TV history of the war and was the springboard for some glittering UK broadcasting careers – Jeremy Issacs, future head of Channel 4 produced and one of the chief script-writers was the left wing but non the less distinguished newspaper columnist Neil Ascherson. Lawrence Olivier narrated and key players in the war such a Speer were still alive to be interviewed.

However, there was a glaring omission. The whole Bletchley Park/Enigma tale, crucial to victory, was still an official secret when the programme was made. Now, about 3,000 people worked at Bletchley Park during the war and the point is that a quarter of a century later no one, no-one, said a word.

Including, as it turned out, Ascherson’s own sister. Would we be capable of such discipline and restraint today? I like to think that, in the face of an equivalent threat, we would, but I don’t know.