A Top Secret History of Codes and Code Breaking

Explore the history of codes from The Haircut Code, used by the Persians to convey messages in war, to Ancient Hebrew ciphers, pictorial codes of the Egyptians and Mayans to letter codes in ancient Rome and substitution ciphers used in Tudor England when the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots was being planned. Find out about modern-day codes, such as tennis players Laura Robson and Heather Watson's 'back slang' when playing doubles and computer codes in the 21st century including the safety of passwords.

This book features strange-but-true facts that are real-life extraordinary stories of codes and their code breakers and 'Code Cracker' practical activities show how you can build or solve your own codes!

Roy Apps is the author of more than fifty children's books, including The Twitches, Fang Gang and How To Handle. He is the author of the highly successful Dream to Win series for Franklin Watts.
His novel The Secret Summer of Daniel Lyons won The Writers' Guild Children's Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Awards. It is now a successful musical.
Roy writes extensively for radio, theatre and TV. In 2001 he was awarded a BAFTA for his children's TV work, which includes Byker Grove, The Ghost Hunter and Barmy Aunt Boomerang.
Roy visits schools, libraries and bookshops to read from his books and to share the secrets of The Shed in Your Head . He runs Writing Projects for all ages and over the last few years has helped young and new writers make books, stage plays, films, performance poetry and most recently, an opera.