The Secret Listeners: How the Y Service Intercepted German Codes for Bletchley Park.

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.[Complete number line 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2.] FINE+/FINE.No owner inscrptn and no price-clip (£20.00) to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,matt,superimposed colour photographic illustrated dw/dj,with red+b/w lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no major nicks or tears present - though front,top corner does have small closed tear.Top +fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight,clean - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,publisher's original,plain red cloth boards with bright, crisp,stamped silver gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,2-354pp [paginated] includes 20 chapters,16pp contemporary b/w photographs in 1 block,between pp166/7,notes,acknowledgements and an index; plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,contents list/table,double-page b/w map (principal Listening Stations of the 'Y' Service) and 4pp blanks at the rear. Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park during the Second World War lies another secret.Before the messages of the German war machine could be decoded,thousands of young men and women had to locate and monitor endless streams of radio traffic around the clock,and transcribe its Morse code at a speed few have ever managed since.They were part of the 'Y' (for 'Wireless') Service: the Listening service - an organisation just as secret as Bletchley Park,but nowadays still little-known and unrecognised.Without it,however,the Allies would have learned nothing of the enemy's military intentions.Now,in the follow-up to his Sunday Times-bestselling 'The Secret Life of Bletchley Park', through dozens of interviews with surviving veterans,Sinclair McKay chronicles the history and achievements of this remarkable group of people.Whereas Bletchley park was a claustrophobically close community crammed into a single Buckinghamshire mansion, the 'Y' Service went wherever the war went.Its listeners might be posted to bustling Cairo to eavesdrop on Rommel's Eighth Army,or to Casablanca in Morocco,or Karachi for the Burma campaign,or even in one case even the idyllic Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean to monitor Japan.Alternatively,they might be sent to congenial Scarborough or Dorset to listen in to German submarines.To men and women often barely out of school such exotic postings were life-changing adventures - even the journey out could be an epic voyage of troopships,flying boats and Indian railways.And the challenges they faced were not merely arduous 12-hour night shifts of dizzying concentration,but heat so intense the perspiration ran into their shoes,or snakes in the filing cabinets.For all of these 'secret listeners',the experience bred self-reliance and broad horizons rare to their generation,while many found lifelong romance in far-flung corners of the world. Now,the hidden story of the Y Service and its vital contribution to the war effort can be told at last. Since April 2013,again in March 2015,and in this year too,the UK Post Office has altered it's Pricing in Proportion template,altering its prices,weight allowances,dimensions and lowered its qualifying compensation rates too! So,please contact rpaxtonden@blueyonder.co.uk ,for correct,insured shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page!