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Tony Comer

@tonycomer.bsky.social
1.4K followers 354 following 177 posts

Former Departmental Historian at GCHQ.

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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
To help those interested in Second World War UK cryptology who wonder about the difference between an indicator and a discriminant, what forty-weepy might be, or what bonking and blogging meant at that time, I have compiled from original sources a glossary. (1/3)
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
On 27 November 1943, Guy Liddell, a senior MI5 officer recorded a story about Winston Churchill. (Source TNA KV4/192)
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
How you maintain Communications Security in the heat of battle? A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at the Battle of the North Cape and concludes that leaving it pragmatically to the people on the spot may be the most sensible approach.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
Does anybody know of a reasonable documentary about the Nuremberg process (apart from episode 25 of The World at War)?
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
From Threads. www.threads.com/@contagiousl... Animal welfare meets immigration policy.
threads.com
Contagious Laughter (@contagiouslaughter.official) on Threads
Following a ban on using animals for entertainment, the Prime Minister of Denmark explains a complication that arose when the state subsequently had to purchase four elephants from the circus. 😂 funny...
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Out to lunch at a pub today and the server asked what drinks people wanted. One asked for Chardonnay and was told 'We don't have any Chardonnay but our house wine is made from the same grape'. 'OK. I'll have that then '
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Excellent review!
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
I've had an article published in Diplomacy & Statecraft: 'Behind the Enigma: How GCHQ's Authorised History Appeared'. The first 50 people to click on the link get a copy for free! www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BCZTB...
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
I explore need-to-know again in a post at www.siginthistorian.blogspot.com looking at an Official Secrets Act case in which a clear Sigint connection was ignored because the investigators had no idea it existed.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
How good is 'I was there' as a guarantee of historical memory? Not, perhaps, as good as it might seem. A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at records and memory.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 16/08/2025
How to sort out parking on busy roads: this is what our council has done.
To keep traffic flowing on a busy road in Cheltenham the council has marked approved parking spaces as half on the road and half on the pavement.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
It's easy to overclassify and it's easy to be nervous about release. An illustration of this point in a new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
A new post at siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at what can happen when two opposing sides are using the same cryptosystems.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
RAF A400M ZM416 (c/s NAPER60) being used to teach pilots how to fly at 600 ft. I assume they have the aircon switched on!
RAF A400M a bit near my house.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
Another superb piece by Gill - how many intelligence historians could follow their paper at a conference with a turn?
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
An excellent thread!
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Excellent news that Bill Tutte is being commemorated on a VE-80 stamp. What a pity, however, that the Post Office doesn't seem to know that 'codebreak' isn't a verb and that codes and ciphers are different. If only there was a national agency that they could have approached for advice ... errr ...
Stamp honouring Bill Tutte for VE 80
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
I'm pleased to report that I asked the question that Daniel Shiu has answered in this article.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
From the other place.
Pope Francis with the King and Queen and a text saying 'If this about a divorce we're not going through this again'.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
This is an excellent piece by Joe Devanny which spells out the extreme difficulties involved when an Inquiry has been asked to assess, not just how intelligence was acquired and assessed a quarter of a century ago, but how, at that time, without the benefit of hindsight,it should have been acted on.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
A really interesting edition of Código Crystal. An interview with former CNI Head Felix Sanz Roldán (in Spanish) about secrecy and transparency. He argues that a release and declassification legislation would increase trust in intelligence agencies. www.rtve.es/play/audios/...
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
A peacock butterfly on the blackthorn flowers, enjoying the sun and not thinking about tariffs at all.
A peacock butterfly on blackthorn flowers.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
I know that this sort of thing - that somebody' conscience was troubling them enough about unpaid tax or whatever that they sent an anonymous or unidentifiable amount to the authorities - used to be relativey common. But was it only in South Africa that it made the Gazette?
Item from the South Afrian Government Gazette in which Customs and Excise issue a note on 29 January 1943 acknowedging receipt of £1/10 'conscience money' from R F in Johannesburg.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
Austerity was really hard in 1949: but there was a welcome mitigation for staff at GCHQ. See siginthistorian.blogspot.com for what happened.
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Frank Sauer @drfranksauer.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 17/03/2025
Words fail me, too, and, I suspect, many more of us.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
'It is time to seek closure and move to fresh subjects.' We should be so lucky … !
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Is the earliest satirical novel about IA a heavily disguised satire on GCHQ as well? See my latest post on siginthistorian.com ...
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
This short thread points out really well some of the conceptual historical challenges the Omagh Inquiry faces.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
The lives traitors live(d)! Post-confession Anthony Blunt's drinks bill was £100 a month in 1965 and he claims to have lived for a day on gin: when gin was £1/10/- (£1.50) a bottle.
Blunt's drinks bill was over £100 a month in late 1965.Blunt liked living on gin.
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Mateusz @mateusz9.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Make Belgium Great Again
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Frode Weierud @frode-weierud.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
I just published some research on rotor machines and wired wheels that has been laying stagnant for about a year. It is nothing groundbreaking and I hope to take the research up again this year. cryptocellar.org/rotor/index....
cryptocellar.org
 Crypto Cellar Research | Rotor Machines and Wired Wheels
Rotor Machines and Wired Wheels contains historical documents about rotor cipher machines and their permutation wheels.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
For a long time, my post as GCHQ Historian was part of the Corporate Knowledge Division, which was where the librarians were based (they called themselves Information Specialists, but they were librarians, a title of honour). I still feel privileged to have worked as part of their team.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Some first thoughts on what newly released MI5 files on John Cairncross tell us about his time as a Soviet agent at Bletchley Park available at siginthistorian.blogspot.com. Some new detail, but there's nothing particularly spectacular.
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Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 14/01/2025
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...
science.anu.edu.au
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements
After reading hundreds and hundreds of PhD theses, we accidentally discovered how to write the perfect PhD acknowledgement: it's a kind of poetry.
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NSIST @nsistuk.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
The UK has some of the oldest and richest signals intelligence (SIGINT), cyber and communications security heritage in the world. NSIST has been established to preserve it - to protect the past for future generations to inform, research and enjoy. Please check out our website at www.nsist.org
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James Lee @jamessflee.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
A really interesting example of public consultation on law reform informing a Government decision here. An initial proposal to stop storing physical historic wills and move to digitised versions (with the physical copies destroyed) has been abandoned assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/677e4b...
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
First we had Javier Milei channelling Bernard Manning: now we have Elon Musk channeling Brian Potter!
Elon Musk insulting Justin Trudeau
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Courtesy of @alcremades.bsky.social links to two new publications by ABIN, the Brazilian intelligence agency: repositorio.enap.gov.br/handle/1/8217 reflecting on 25 years of ABIN, and repositorio.enap.gov.br/handle/1/8216 lookng at the challenges 2025 will bring.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
On the tenth day of Christmas my true love gave to me a photo of the seasonal isle at Waitrose.
Easter-themed chocolate at Waitrose Cheltenham on 3 January 2025
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
A new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com looks at how activity by the Admiralty between 1900 and 1914 prepared the ground for Room 40, even if they didn't create a Sigint organisation before the war.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Help sought! Can anybody identify the alphabet on this (probable) cipher wheel? TIA
Ring from probable cipher wheel in an unknown alphabet.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
I don't usually comment on current events on social media: partly a hangover from not being allowed to, partly because I can't think of a worse medium in which to discuss politics. But this poem by Clive James retweeted on X by Simon Sebag-Montefiore about Asma Asad is worth breaking the rule for.
Poem by Clive James about Asma Asad.
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Jock ‘Anonymous Low Level Loser’ Bruce @jockbruce.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
Can you imagine the mutterings in the GRU canteen about ‘bloody foreigners taking our jobs’.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
A new post on siginthistorian.blogspot.com explores Collection Management and ponders the unseen functions that Sigint needs to succeed. It also says just what job the Princess of Wales's grandmother and great-aunt were doing at Bletchley Park.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
I owe Gordon so much for his patience with somebody who had never been interviewed before, from an organisation which had avoided the media for ever. I hope his future is full of new challenges successfully met!
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
We were invaded by dragons last night - well, a lesser spotted newt either managed to get 200 yards from the nearest stream or was brought along somewhere to expire in our garage. I've never seen one before.
A lesser spotted newt on a piece of kitchen towel.
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Tony Comer @tonycomer.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
What happened at Bletchley Parks when clever people were asked to do uncongenial tasks? You can possibly guess! See siginthistorian.blogspot.com
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Gill Bennett @gillhistory.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I encourage you to laugh at my musical efforts! Too old to care about looking ridiculous, and doing this kind of thing helps a historian to keep cheerful when there seems to be gloom and doom all around. www.youtube.com/watch?v=agNX...
youtube.com
Help Me Make It Through The Night; in memory of Kris Kristofferson.
YouTube video by Gill's New Groove
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Carl Bovis @carlbovisnature.bsky.social · 22/10/2023
Roger quickly came to the conclusion that Sparrows made useless skateboards.... linktr.ee/carlbovis
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