13 Facts About Dilly Knox

Dilly Knox then joined the Government Code and Cypher School.

Dilly Knox built the team and discovered the method that broke the Italian Naval Enigma, producing the intelligence credited with Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Matapan.

Dilly Knox's father was a descendant of John Arbuthnott, 8th Viscount of Arbuthnott.

Dilly Knox studied classics at King's College, Cambridge from 1903, and in 1909 was elected a Fellow following the death of Walter Headlam, from whom he inherited extensive research into the works of Herodas.

Dilly Knox privately coached Harold Macmillan, the future Prime Minister, at King's for a few weeks in 1910, but Macmillan found him "austere and uncongenial".

Dilly Knox married Olive Rodman in 1920, forgetting to invite two of his three brothers to his wedding.

Between the two World Wars Dilly Knox worked on the great commentary on Herodas that had been started by Walter Headlam, damaging his eyesight while studying the British Museum's collection of papyrus fragments, but finally managing to decipher the text of the Herodas papyri.

Dilly Knox persuaded his superiors to have a bathtub installed in his office in the cryptanalysis section of the British Admiralty.

In 1917, Dilly Knox followed Room 40 with its expansion into ID25.

On 24 April 1937, Dilly Knox broke the Spanish Enigma but knowledge of this breakthrough was not shared with the Republicans.

The good impression made by Rejewski on Dilly Knox played an important role in increasing recruitment of mathematicians to Bletchley Park.

Dilly Knox's work was cut short when he fell ill with lymphoma.

Dilly Knox celebrated the victory at Battle of Cape Matapan with poetry, which remained classified until 1978.