Secret writing, told through the people who hid messages and the people who broke them

The History of Cryptography

The History of Cryptography is my series on secret writing, from the Renaissance conjurers to the modern cipher, told through the people who hid messages and the people who broke them. It opens with John Dee, who hand-copied Europe's first cryptography book and then spent years writing down what a scryer said the angels said. The ghost story, told straight, and then the ledger of who actually invented each piece of it, from Weever in 1631 to the 007 of 1968.

Then Walsingham's cipher office, and onward to the machines. It is a history of people, and most of them were stranger than their ciphers.