Dry read by a terrible narrator

The book might be easier to read than to listen: long lists of tactical units are difficult to follow in an audiobook. The story lacks coherency - the author jumps from one person to the other without properly developing their specific roles. Maybe that was the whole point - to show Bletchley Park as a single protagonista, an organization based on labour of thousands of employees.

If you are interested in the history of Bletchley Park, I wouldn't recommend this book either - it is focused quite narrowly on, well, the role of Bletchley Park in the invasion.

But it is the narrator that deserves a separate paragraph. I have almost 200 audiobooks on my virtual shelf, and Greg Patmore's is easily one of the worst performances I heard. A dramatised imitation of voices of British officers apparently was intended to liven up the story. It is just ridiculous, though. One would also expect to have a narrator with basic grasp of German pronunciation when dealing with the book on D-Day - and Mr Patmore definitely has none.

You are warned. Listen at your own risk.

6 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Definitive account of the Intelligence process

David Kenyon gives a comprehensive overview of the nuts and bolts behind the astonishing level of Intelligence gained, and not just highlighting the code breaking stars. He then shows how the information was used, how timely it was - and occasionally wasn’t - and in what ways it helped Allied Commanders.

Greg Patmore’s narration is intelligent and feeling, and gives great varieties of authentic accents to all the nationalities involved, including widely diverging British and German accents. Rather a tour de force. Bravo!

2 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Just too dry

It’s rare that I don’t finish a book. I’m a WWII buff, but this is really dry stuff. Numbers, acronyms deciphered, when sometimes the acronym is used just a few times, so he might as well just have said it out in full, a lot of dry recitation of information about the work done at Bletchley Park. The narrator did vary his voice and accents to try to make it better to listen to, but I found it not interesting enough. So I cheated and marked this as finished when I was a bit more than halfway through, so I could write a review. It was included with membership, so it was worth a try, but not worth finishing.

1 personne a trouvé cela utile

Great

This was very good. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in WWII espionage and code breaking.

A very deep dive into an interesting topic.

This was good very granular but good. If you like World War II history and particularly encryption type stuff this is a good lesson.

You have to be interested

This is an excellent book, but you do have to be interested in the subject