Cryptography

29 Jan, 2004 650 Management and public relations

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and history of codes. In October 1586, in the forbidding hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Mary Queen of Scots was on trial for her life. Accused of treason and denied legal representation, she sat alone in the shadow of a vast and empty throne belonging to her absent cousin and arch rival Elizabeth I of England. Walsingham, Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary, had already arrested and executed Mary’s fellow conspirators, her only hope lay in the code she had used in all her letters concerning the plot. If her cipher remained unbroken she might yet be saved. Not for the first time the life of an individual and the course of history depended on the arcane art of Cryptography.What are the origins of this secretive science? And what links the ‘Caesar Cipher’ with the complex algorithms which underpin so much of our modern age?

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Guests

  • Simon Singh No other episodes
    Science writer
  • Professor Fred Piper No other episodes
    Director of the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London
  • Lisa Jardine 8 episodes
    Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London

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Programme ID: p004y272

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y272

Auto-category: 652.8 (Cryptography)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello. In October 1586, in the Forbidding Hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Mary, Queen of Scots, was on trial for her life.