New biography to ‘recify the damage done’ to codebreaker
IN life, he was the first head of GCHQ, who spotted the talent of Alan Turing and helped win the Second World War.
By the time Hollywood got their hands on him, he was turned into a “pompous prat” obsessed with hindering the efforts of Bletchley Park’s stars.
The true story of Commander Alastair Denniston’s life is now to be revealed to the public after a historian, GCHQ and his own family teamed up to set the record straight.
Cdr Denniston’s grandchildren said they hoped a new biography would “rectify the damage done” to his reputation by The Imitation Game, in which Charles Dance played him as a “baddie”. The film, which starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, but left Cdr Denniston’s descendants “hurt” by what they condemned as an unfair portrayal. Speaking in 2014, Nick Denniston, his grandson, said those who knew him well had been “deeply offended” by the character.
Candida Connolly, Cdr Denniston’s granddaughter, said of the family’s hopes for the biography: “To rectify the damage done by The Imitation Game, that would be a good start.”
The book, written by Dr Joel Greenberg, will detail the beginning of his career in the Admiralty’s Room 40, spending the First World War as a cryptanalyst before going on to lead the Government Code and Cypher School.
Running Bletchley Park, he is credited with establishing the beginnings of the “special relationship” by liaising with the US, and recruited the team which cracked the enigma code. The producers of The Imitation Game have previously called Cdr Denniston “one of the great heroes of Bletchley Park”.
He died in 1961. The book, Alastair Denniston: Code-Breaking from Room 40 to Berkeley Street and the Birth of GCHQ, is available through Frontline Books and will officially be launched at GCHQ next week.