The Secrets of Station X cover art

The Secrets of Station X

How the Bletchley Park codebreakers helped win the war

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The Secrets of Station X

By: Michael Smith
Narrated by: Patrick Molyneux
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About this listen

Bletchley 1945: a place where nearly 10,000 people would contribute decisively to the Allied war effort. Their role? To decode the Enigma cypher used by the Germans for high-level communications. It is an astonishing story. A melting pot of Oxbridge dons, maverick oddballs and more regular citizens worked night and day at Station X, as Bletchley Park was known, to derive intelligence information from German coded messages. That they succeeded, despite military scepticism, is testament to an indomitable spirit that wrenched British intelligence into the modern age, as the Second World War segued into the Cold War.

©2014 Michael Smith (P)2014 Oakhill Publishing Europe Great Britain Military World War England Imperialism Air Force

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All stars
Most relevant  
great factual account but the accent of the reader was distracting. as were the unwritten pauses in the narrative.

station x

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A fantastic, well written story ruined by poor narration. Badly attempted accents were not required.

Poor Narration

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This book was written superbly but spoilt by the narration. Patrick Molyneux is an outstanding actor who sounded far too chavvy in this particular story!

Excellent book spoilt by bad narration

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The Bletchley story is worth reading/listening to again and again - the content of the book is great.

The reader, however, is dire. No German at all - he is painful - perhaps must strikingly by Goethe as ‘goat.’ Unbelievable that this recording was allowed into the open!

Poorly read version of a timeless story.

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Station X was the war,-time code-breaking establishment based at Bletchley Park. It was through the efforts of this mixed bunch of electric academics, civilians and military personnel who listened to the thousands of coded messages coming from all parts of the German Reich.


Michael Smith's book, Station X accompanied the Channel 4 series of the same name. The book and television series detailed the history of Bletchley Park and the efforts of those based there to break the "impregnable" Enigma machine. The German's did not sit still during the war, they refined it for example by adding an additional fourth reel to increase encryption. This meant that the battle to break the codes went on continuously. Many of Britain's brightest minds, worked at Bletchly including Alan Turing, who went on to design the world's first computer in Manchester..


The home of Britain's "most secret sources" was not revealed until 1974. Up to that time only very few people knew of the existence of Station X.  Britain owes a great debt of gratitude to the eccentric men and women who worked at BP, because although they were not front line troops, indeed many of them would not have survived in a regular military unit. Never the less there efforts saved millions of lives.


I bought this book when first published, it was one of the fist history books I ever bought through choice and was the start of my interest of 20th century history, particularly espionage and intelligence, enough about me, Michael Smith's book is a great read.

the home of most secret sources

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I am particularly interested in what went on at Bletchley Park and GCCS during the Second World War and there have been many books written in recent years by those involved. As a subject, cryptography can be a daunting matter to make understandable to most readers, but this factual book manages to do a pretty good job of it. The social dynamics are just as interesting as the cryptography - how amazing that several thousand people could keep such a secret over so many years. Also interesting is how some lauded reputations are effectively debunked, for instance Fieldmarshall Montgomery's. So far so good, but my enjoyment was considerably curtailed by this performance I'm afraid. For me, the frequent mispronouniation of familiar place names, and the amazing running together of consecutive paragraphs often left my head spinning. A description of events in Europe, for instance, running without punctuation or pause into the next chapter about events in the Pacific is one example, sadly a frequent non-sequeteur in this performance. I did wonder whether English was the reader's native language at one stage, as the words flow out in a monotonous stream on and on, without imparting sense by suitable changes of intonation,but that's too harsh. I suggest that you buy the paper book, it's much more enjoyable than this tepid offering.

Such a poor reading of a fascinating book

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Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

It was okay, but could have been so much better

What did you like best about this story?

The insight into what happened at Bletchley

How could the performance have been better?

The reader was little short of awful. He read the book much too fast, but what grated most for me was his lack of research and insight. References to Lord Dacre (pronounced Daker) as Dacree, Caen as Cayenne, and Balliol as Bal e ol are to my mind indicative of the slap dash production of this audiobook it ought to be deleted and re-recorded to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

Any additional comments?

The book was very interesting, but its structure was not one I found helpful. Rather than going back and forth through the years over each element of different codes being broken a more informative and ultimately better book could have been written by outlining the history and development of Bletchley park chronologically, so the reader could get a much better idea of how all the different cyphers and codes were read and dealt with as the war progressed together with summarising the overall impact each year. As it is written the book is disjointed and highly repetitive. It isn't an easy task to pull this subject together, but this book although informative, felt like a missed opportunity. For the audiobook, this problem was compounded by a very poor reader and very poor production. Overall disappointing which is a great pity given the nature of the subject and how interesting it could have been and deserves to be.

Interesting content, but not without its problems

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Patrick Molyneux has the reading skills of a 7 year old. One would have expected that he practiced his German pronounciation before he started reading. His voice and diction did not do justice to a great story .

Badly read

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If this book wasn’t for you, who do you think might enjoy it more?

Good book, interesting read, but the narrator was very poor.

How could the performance have been better?

Poor accents, not interested in the story, read as though the best thing was to get through it as quickly as possible.

Any additional comments?

Read the paper copy!

Ruined by poor narrator

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Loved the story/book, however the recording is poorly produced with pauses, uneven volume and badly cut together 'takes'. Aside from some unusual pronunciation of some words the narrator was about average. If these audio issues are addressed it would be 5/5!

Great story let down by poor audio production

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