No one normal could have done that. Do you know, this morning… I was on a train that went through a city that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. I bought a ticket from a man who would likely be dead if it wasn’t for you. I read up on my work… a whole field of scientific inquiry that only exists because of you. Now, if you wish you could have been normal… I can promise you I do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t. I think that sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

Are you paying attention? Good. If you are not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. You think that because you’re sitting where you are, and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. You’re mistaken. I am in control, because I know things that you do not know. What I will need from you now is a commitment. You will listen closely, and you will not judge me until I am finished. If you cannot commit to this, then please leave the room. But if you choose to stay, remember you chose to be here. What happens from this moment forward is not my responsibility. It’s yours. Pay attention.

_{The war dragged on for two more solitary years, and every day we performed our blood-soaked calculus. Every day we decided who lived and who died. Every day we helped the Allies to victories and nobody knew. Stalingrad. The Ardenne. The invasion of Normandy. All victories that would not have been possible without the intelligence that we supplied. People talk about the war as this epic battle between civilisations. Freedom versus tyranny. Democracy versus Nazism. Armies of millions bleeding into the ground. Fleets of ships weighing down the oceans. Planes dropping bombs from the sky until they obliterated the sun itself. The war wasn’t like that for us. For us it was just half a dozen crossword enthusiasts in a tiny village in the South of England.}