Artwork for podcast The BackTracker History Show
Bristol's Code Breaker: Gordon Welchman
Episode 3624th November 2025 • The BackTracker History Show • The Backtracker
00:00:00 00:25:21

Share Episode

Shownotes

Bristol's Code Breaker: Gordon Welchman

Season: 6 Episode: 36

Dive into the extraordinary mind behind the unseen machinery of Allied codebreaking. In this episode, we explore how Gordon Welchman’s quiet brilliance reshaped the war effort, the birth of traffic analysis, and why his ideas still echo through modern intelligence work. If you’ve ever wondered how the hidden architecture of Bletchley Park truly worked, this one’s a treat. Tune in and meet the strategist who changed everything from behind the curtain.

CAST

Gordon Welchman - Marcus Kepple-Palmer

Alastair Denniston - Tony Allen

Sir Stuart Milner Barry - Steve Sheperd

THIS PODCAST

This podcast has been specially edited from a Bradley Stoke Radio show in Bristol, England. 

If you liked it please leave a rating and maybe a comment and if you’d like to support the show with a donation, however small, you can go to Ko-Fi.com

Some more great news for you, if you were interested in buying merchandise featuring the show’s logo, then pop over to Teepublic, you’ll find lots of things to choose from.

So, thankyou for listening and until next time guys, take care and look after each other.

CONTACT ME

Email: info@backtracker.co.uk

Facebook: @BackTrackerUK

Instagram: @backtrackeruk

Bluesky: @BackTrackerUK

-

SOURCES

Bletchey Park

Western Daily Press - Monday 22 March 1937

GCHQ

L Field, Gordon Welchman and his Contributions to Breaking the Enigma Code (Honours Project 2013-14, University of St Andrews, 2014).

Trinity College. Cambridge

Ancestry

-

Sound Effects by zapsplat.com

Intro music by The Model Folk 

Back In The Day music by Freesoundmusic

© THE BACKTRACKER HISTORY SHOW 2025

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube