Peter Rhodes on global warming, ocean cooling and being in the presence of greatness

As an ocean researcher at Utrecht University puts it: “We are moving closer to the collapse, but we’re not sure how much closer.”

To sum up, we are facing two separate catastrophes, one caused by heating, the other by cooling. Is no-one going to suggest a third possibility, that these two phenomena might cancel each other out? Here is my brilliantly computed scientific equation: Global warming + Gulf Stream collapse = not much change at all, really.

An estate agent put a cottage up for sale in Buckinghamshire complete with a blue plaque declaring that the legendary wartime code-buster Alan Turing and two colleagues lived there from 1939-46.

Local historians dispute the claim which has now been removed from the adverts. And yet . . .

You see, it occurs to me that the aim of Turing and the Bletchley Park team was not only to break codes but to bewilder the enemy by deception, distraction and disinformation.

What could be a more fitting memorial to these heroes than a plaque claiming they lived there when they actually lived somewhere else? Perfect.

One of those mentioned on the problematic plaque is Harry Hinsley, one of the most remarkable characters of the Second World War. He was a working-class lad from Walsall. His father drove a coal wagon and his mother was a school caretaker.

From humble beginnings Hinsley became a great academic whose work at Bletchley Park is reckoned to have shortened the war by several years. He became Master of St John’s College, Cambridge, which is where I interviewed him in the 1980s on the publication of his monumental work, British Intelligence in the Second World War.

There are rare moments in this job when you know you are in the presence of greatness. Meeting Sir Harry Hinsley was one of them.