The Doughnut

The Town That Knew Too Much

Sep 1, 202144:27Society & Culture

The Doughnut. A giant circular low-rise office block in west Cheltenham; it is, jokingly I'm sure, said to look from above like a giant bullseye. Here, the men and women of GCHQ go to work every day. Here they listen to...

Related Episodes

Continue listening to more episodes from The Town That Knew Too Much.

5: The Ballad of Reading Services

Dec 23, 2022 - 17:04

Christmas Day, 2021. I stop at Reading motorway services and find graffiti on the wall of a toilet cubicl...

4: A History of the English Village

Nov 29, 2022 - 31:37

What makes the quintessential English village? A church? A pub? A post office? A cricket pitch? Everyone...

3: The Maunsell Sea Forts: Iron islands in the Thames

Nov 21, 2022 - 27:14

In 1942, an engineer named Guy Maunsell constructed a series of audacious defensive towers out where the...

2: Lewes: a town of smoke and flame

Nov 4, 2022 - 23:35

Remember, remember the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder trea...

1: Pluckley: England's most haunted village

Oct 31, 2022 - 21:15

Nestled away in Kent is the small village of Pluckley. It looks charming and chocolate boxy: a pub, a but...

Coming on Halloween... Other Edens

Oct 28, 2022 - 3:01

All things must change. As surely as winter bursts into spring life, spring into bountiful summer, summer...

The Black Abbot

Aug 25, 2021 - 32:58

Where do the dead go when they die? Do we file them away in obituaries? Or celebrate them at a memorial s...

Time of Trial

Aug 18, 2021 - 31:58

Geoffrey Prime, Soviet spy at GCHQ, has been arrested on sexual offences against children. But that was j...