Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence

BLUNT, ANTHONY• 59

set in a private estate in what is now the new town of Milton Keynes.

It was bought by AdmiralSir Hugh Sinclairin 1938 as an emer-

gency headquarters for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). During

the Munich crisis, Sinclair mobilized theGovernment Code and Ci-

pher School(GC&CS) and accommodated hundreds of linguists, an-

alysts, and cryptographers in temporary huts on the extensive

grounds to work on German intercepted wireless traffic. SIS’sSec-

tion VIIIwas transferred to nearbyWhaddon Hallin November

1939, and the radio masts were removed from the garden.

By the end of the war, GC&CS’s British and American staff of

12,500 had broken a large number ofEnigmakeys. The resulting

decrypts, circulated under the code names bonifaceand then

ultra, enabled strategists to shorten the war by an estimated two

years. After the war,GCHQmoved its headquarters to Eastcote but

a training facility remained on the site until 1985, when the estate

was taken over by British Telecom.

BLOCKADE INTELLIGENCE.One of the two divisions of the
Ministry of Economic Warfare’s Intelligence Branch, created in
November 1939 and headed by MajorDesmond Morton. Blockade
Intelligence had responsibility for the collection and collation of in-
formation concerning foreign shipping, and its distribution to Contra-
band Control for enforcement by the Royal Navy.

BLOUNT, SIR CHARLES.The prewar director ofair intelligenceat
the Air Ministry, Charles Blount was responsible in 1934 for devel-
oping AI4, theRoyal Air Force’s first signals intelligence unit,
based at RAF Waddington.

BLUNT, ANTHONY.A wartimeMI5officer, Anthony Blunt was a
member of the notoriousCambridge Fiveand worked as an active
Soviet agent from his recruitment in 1936. The son of the embassy
chaplain in Paris, Blunt was educated at Marlborough and Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he excelled in French but later gained a
reputation as an art historian, specializing in the paintings of Poussin.
At the outbreak of war, Blunt remained in contact withKim Philby
andGuy Burgess, but disliked his former pupil,John Cairncross,
all of whom were part of theNKVDnetwork set up by the Soviet