Peter Calvocoressi

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Peter Calvocoressi (born in 1912) is a British political author and a former cryptanalyst for the Royal Air Force during World War II.

1 Early years
2 Career
3 Bibliography
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References

[edit] Early years

Calvacoressi was born in Karachi, nowadays in Pakistan, to a family of Greek origins from the island Chios related to the Rallis; a notable political family in Greece. When he was three months old, the family moved to Liverpool, England.

At Eton College he translated the Abide with Me hymn into Latin. He spoke many European languages including Greek, Latin, Italian, German and French.

Calvocoressi was at Balliol College, Oxford from 1931 to 1934. There was influenced by the teachings of Lewis Bernstein Namier.

[edit] Career

Calvocoressi is known for his writing on Ultra Intelligence at Bletchley Park and for his collecting evidence for the trials of war criminals in the Nuremberg trials. Later he became chairman of the London Library.^[1]

In 1940, he joined RAF Intelligence working at Bletchley Park decrypting German signals from their Enigma encryption system to produce intelligence known as Ultra. Subsequently, he was hired by the Pentagon to assist in the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

Calvocoressi stood as Liberal candidate for Parliament in 1945. From 1949 to 1954 he wrote annual survey for Royal Institute of International Affairs

Between 1962 and 1971, Calvocoressi was a member of the Working Group on Minorities, a Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. In the same period he was chairman of the Africa Bureau of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

In 1990, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University.