When the British military commandeered Bletchley Park in 1939 no one would have guessed that by 1945 its inmates would have contributed decisively to the Allied war effort.

A melting pot of Oxbridge dons and maverick oddballs worked night and day at Station X to decode the Enigma cypher used by the Germans for high-level communications. That they succeeded, changing the course of the war, is testament to an indomitable spirit that wrenched British intelligence into the modern age, as World War II segued into the Cold War.