Anthony J Randall examines the life of Joan Clarke and her role in breaking the Naval Enigma at Bletchley Park, alongside Alan Turing. An outstanding mathematician, Joan was the daughter of an Anglican priest and the granddaughter of the Archbishop of Melbourne. Having been recruited by GC&CS at the beginning of the war, Joan stayed with what then became GCHQ until well past retirement age. She worked on the unmasking of Philby, Burgess and Maclean, and on the decryption of intercepted Soviet communications during the Cold War. For ten years she lived 'very quietly' surrounded by the technology of the Cold War and the Early Warning systems installed on the east coast of Scotland, only to return to GCHQ in the early 1960s to take up a new position at Cheltenham, as though nothing had happened during the intervening years. Portrayed by Keira Knightley in the Hollywood film The Imitation Game, in reality Joan Clarke was the quiet woman of British Security; a role she played for forty-five years.

Anthony J Randall examines the resistance movement along the French and Belgian border during the first year of the Great War, culminating with the execution of Edith Cavell and Philippe Baucq in October 1915. There were others: Louise Thuliez, Henriette Moriame, Jacqueline Van Til, Princess Marie de Croy and Jeanne de Belleville. They all sacrificed their freedom, if not their lives. Some were from the French and Belgian aristocracy, others were simple peasants; all were patriots. Some were rewarded, others returned to obscurity: all were heroes. Georges Gaston Quien plays his part in the story. A Frenchman for whom the war was a game and for whom the consequences of his actions deserve to be his epitaph.

Anthony J Randall looks at the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper and investigates the family background of their paternal and maternal lines. Perhaps their histories reveal the origins of their destiny. Perhaps their family backgrounds hold the seeds to the paths they trod. In this searching investigation many birth, marriage and death certificates, and over two hundred census returns, have been transcribed and presented. This book examines the history and genealogy of the 'canonical' victims to guide the reader from the industrial centres of Staffordshire, the wide marshes of Sussex and the woodlands of the Forest of Dean to the east end of London and the deprivation of Whitechapel.