Secret listeners – revealing the life of amateur radio heroes (UK)

The story of the WW2 codebreakers at Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes, the cracking of the German Enigma and Lorenz cypher machines and the role of supreme mathematicians such as Alan Turing is increasingly well known. However the role of the Voluntary Interceptors is equally important but more obscure.

Prior to the outbreak of WW1 in August 1914, many of the techniques to be used in later years for radio communications had already been invented. During the interwar years amateur radio enthusiasts began to emerge in the UK and by 1922 there were 6,986 wireless licences issued to receive transmissions and 286 giving permission to transmit.