E193 - Focus On: Asa Briggs

2026-07-24

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July 2026Lord Asa Briggs – the Keighley-born historian of the Victorian age and of broadcasting, served most prominently as vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex and later Chancellor of the Open University. He was one of Britain’s most influential public intellectuals of the 20th Century. Less well known, however, is the formative period he spent at Bletchley Park between 1943 and 1945.Arriving somewhat after the time of pioneering codebreaking, Asa found a mature Hut 6 working eff...

July 2026

Lord Asa Briggs – the Keighley-born historian of the Victorian age and of broadcasting, served most prominently as vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex and later Chancellor of the Open University. He was one of Britain’s most influential public intellectuals of the 20th Century. Less well known, however, is the formative period he spent at Bletchley Park between 1943 and 1945.

Arriving somewhat after the time of pioneering codebreaking, Asa found a mature Hut 6 working efficiently and at scale. His insights into the work, as well as the social life at Bletchley Park, documented through contemporary diaries and letters as well as later writing, reveal much about the experience of the rank and file codebreakers in the Bletchley Park ‘intelligence factory’.

Bletchley Park’s Research Officer, Dr Thomas Cheetham, is joined by Adam Sisman, author of ‘The Indefatigable Asa Briggs’, to focus on the life of this era-defining figure.

This episode is interspersed with an interview we recorded with Lord Briggs on one of his last visits to Bletchley Park.

©Bletchley Park Trust 2026

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Enigma, #Codebreaker,

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