Saving Bletchley Park
Page 31
He is one of the “elves” that write the popular BBC TV series QI and its sister show, The Museum of Curiosity, for BBC Radio 4.
He has, among other things, been a police officer, a chef, a potato picker, a milkman and the official artist for the 2006 UK National Children’s Book Fair. He’s written briefing notes for two prime ministers, TV scripts for Gerry Anderson and Doctor Who, and helped build dinosaur skeletons for the Natural History Museum and movie monsters for Bruce Willis to shoot at. He’s also been set on fire twice, been kissed by Princess Diana once, and Freddie Mercury once wore his helmet.
He is a creative consultant for Left/Field London and a visiting lecturer at a number of UK universities. He has given hundreds of talks across the UK and USA on a variety of subjects from problem solving to exobiology, and from Cornish mythology to why he believes that he wasn’t intelligently designed. He was a judge for the 2014 Transmission Awards for the Communication of Ideas.
He is a contributor to various QI books and the author of Joined-Up Thinking (Pan Macmillan 2008), Henhwedhlow (Kowethas 2010), Constable Colgan’s Connectoscope®(Unbound 2013) and The Third Condiment (deLune 2014).
He stops inordinately frequently for tea.
There are so many people that were a part of the campaign that it would take a whole book to name everyone. If you ever tweeted, Facebooked or cajoled innocent people into helping to save Bletchley Park, thank you SO MUCH. Look what we did! Together, we made great change happen .
Thank you so much to everyone who worked tirelessly to get the Bletchley Park museum going including: Roger Bristow, Brian White, Chris and Lindsey Smith, Peter and Rowena Westcombe, Peter and Sue Jarvis, Tony and Margaret Sale and many others.
Thanks to everyone that spoke to me to help with background research, some already mentioned, also: Jean Valentine, David White from MKARS, Simon Greenish, Sam Crooks, Fred Piper, Tim Reynolds and Captain Jerry Roberts.
Thank you to all the BCSWomen who were part of the Women of Station X project: Jo Komisarczuk, Jill Dann, Lucy Hunt, Sarah Winmill, Rachel Burnett, Conrad Taylor and Genevieve Hibbs, and to Ann Day for interview- ing all the veterans.
John Harper and the Bombe rebuild team first got me interested in Bletchley Park in 2003; if we hadn’t spoken to John I might never have known about the major role that Bletchley Park played in WWII. I would have left after my first visit none the wiser. Thank you.
Thanks to John Turner for early support for the campaign and writing the letter we sent into The Times in 2008.
Thanks to Chris Maigler and Maria Margeti for suggesting I start a blog and then setting it up for me.
Thanks to everyone from CPHC who signed the petition and the letter to The Times and who supported and encouraged me throughout the campaign.
To @Sizemore, @Documentally, @Jemimah_Knight and @StephenFry who really catalysed the social media campaign, thank you so much. You really made a massive difference.
Thanks,Twitter, for being such a great platform; you enabled us to reach thousands of people across the world and encourage them to join the campaign.
Thanks to all the Amplified crew who took the time and effort to come up to Bletchley Park and interview veterans on Enigma Reunion Day 2009 and 2010: Toby Moores, Steve Lawson, Hannah Nicklin, Kate Arkless Gray, Benjamin Ellis, Julia and Nat Higginbottom, Maggie Philbin, Matt Rawlinson, Britt Warg, Gordon Tant, Graham Johnson, Drew Buddie and A L Ranson.
Many thanks are due to two of my heroes, Professor Brian Randell and Brian Oakley. Brian Randell has been a great role model for me during the campaign; he fought for and was successful in getting recognition for Tommy Flowers, the inventor and builder of Colossus. Brian Oakley ded- icated years of his life to chronicling what went on at Bletchley Park and who did what.
To Pat Galea who has kept me laughing all the way through the cam- paign and been a major supporter of both the campaign and of Bletchley Park itself. Cheers, Dude!
To my lovely friends Heather Taylor and Benjamin Ellis, thanks for giving me lots of encouragement and ideas at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, in 2012. I did it... finally.
Pink Punters, thank you so much for letting me drive your double decker bus around Bletchley Park, and thanks, Kelsey Griffin, for organising it. Massive thanks also to everyone that came along that day to see me realise a lifetime’s ambition. What a fun day.
Massive thanks to the @g00dfornothing crew for their fabulous energy and ideas.
Thanks, Lisa Crispin and Anna Blake, for providing one of the most unexpectedly fun days of the campaign in Colorado when we got stuck there due to a certain Icelandic volcanic eruption. I still can’t believe that I ended up blowing into a llama’s nostrils and having an impromtu dres- sage lesson. Maybe it was a dream?
To Simon Meacham and Megan Smith who helped Bletchley Park to buy the Turing papers and so much more, and to Peter Barron and team at Google London: Lynette Webb, Claudia Baker and Amy Brown, thanks for all your support and a fabulous garden party.
Thanks, Robert Lllewelyn, for a wonderful Carpool trip up to Bletchley.
Thanks, Paul Clarke and Daren Forsyth, for lots of Twitter support and in particular persuading me that crowdfunding our trip to Museums and the Web was a viable idea. You were right.
Thanks, Heidi Stephens, for taking the time to help me with my pitch and helping me to get started.
Steve Colgan, thank you so much for being such a wonderful person to work with you made it such fun. Cheers, Dude!
To everyone at Unbound who has helped me to make this book happen, especially Justin, Isobel, Dan, Miranda, DeAndra, Lauren and of course Jimmy.
To some great proofreaders: my fab daughter-in-law Emma Hanes, my wonderful partner Dr Paul Boca, JP Rangaswami, Grady Booch, Pat Galea, Kate Day and Alan Burkitt-Gray.
L to R: my partner Paul Boca, me, my children Emma, Oliver, Leah and Samuel. Last and most importantly thanks to my family. Here we are outside Station X after a fabulous tour of Bletchley Park in March 2009. It was my twin sons Sam and Ollys’ 23rd birthday. What better present could I give them for their birthday than a tour of Bletchley Park?
My lovely family put up with and supported my obsession with saving Bletchley Park over many years. I can’t thank you all enough. I love you all dearly. xxx
Supporters
Unbound is a new kind of publishing house. Our books are funded directly by readers. This was a very popular idea during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Now we have revived it for the internet age. It allows authors to write the books they really want to write and readers to support the writing they would most like to see published.
The names listed below are of readers who have pledged their support and made this book happen. If you’d like to join them, visit: www.unbound.co.uk.
For Dad, love from Tom
@unclewilco from readersheds.co.uk
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