Poland in the UK

Sir Dermot received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland from Polish ambassador to London Arkady Rzegocki on behalf of Poland’s President Andrzej Duda for ”spreading knowledge about the role of Polish cryptologists not only in the United Kingdom, but also in France and other countries”.

In 2018, he published X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken, a book which details the Polish-British-French cooperation on deciphering Enigma and emphasises that the accomplishments of his famous uncle would have been considerably slowed down – if not impossible – without the vital accomplishments of the Polish School of Mathematics.

Sir Dermot was awarded the honour during a small ceremony at Ognisko Polskie – The Polish Hearth Club attended by, among others, a niece of one of the Polish codebreakers, Henryk Zygalski, and Second World War historians.

He said: “It is quite an extraordinary and humbling experience to be given this honour, for which I am very grateful. It was a pleasure to bring the early part of the story of Enigma codebreaking to a wider audience, particularly in the UK.

”In comparison with the codebreakers, who not only achieved the astonishing breakthrough which allowed Enigma messages to be read throughout the Second World War, and exposed their own lives in order to keep the secret safe, I have done nothing of any great significance. So in a sense, I see myself as receiving this order in acknowledgment of the codebreakers’ work rather than my own.

”I would also like to acknowledge the immense amount of help I had in my research from the Polish Embassy in the UK, the institutes in London which safeguard Polish wartime records, and not least the families of the codebreakers themselves.”

Ambassador Rzegocki added: ”The Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland is a wonderful recognition of Sir Dermot Turing’s important, continued and tireless efforts to underline the role that Polish mathematicians played in deciphering the Enigma code, which helped shorten the war by up to two years. I am grateful for his work, for it helps to bring the real story of Enigma codebreaking into British public’s consciousness. I am honoured to be awarding this order on behalf of President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda to an individual I am proud to call a friend of Poland.”

Poles were first to employ mathematics in cryptanalysis just after the end of the First World War, and first to break the Enigma code in December 1932. They passed on their work to French and British allies on the eve of the Second World War, in the summer of 1939. Their mathematical and technical achievements laid the foundations for Alan Turing’s work and the mass-scale codebreaking effort of Bletchley Park.

The Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, which has five classes, is awarded to foreign nationals and Polish citizens living abroad who, through their efforts, greatly contribute to both international cooperation and cooperation between the Republic of Poland and other countries.