Sir Peter Harvey Marychurch (13 June 1927 – 21 May 2017Birthdays Tomorrow The Independent, 12 June 1993) was Director of the British signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, a post he held from 1983 to 1989.
Career Educated at The John Lyon School, Marychurch served in the Royal Air Force immediately after the Second World War and then joined GCHQ in 1948.Who's Who 2010, A & C Black, 2010, According to the memoirs of a former MI5 intelligence officer, in the 1960s, Marychurch, then a young GCHQ cryptanalyst, applied computerised cluster analysis to the problem of traffic analysis of espionage traffic.Peter Wright, Spycatcher, p. 153, 1987 Marychurch lends his name to the "Sir Peter Marychurch award", an honour given annually for work in international cryptology.Office of the Director of National Intelligence He spent several years working at the Government Communications Security Bureau, New Zealand's SIGINT agency.Aldrich, David, GCHQ, Harper Press, 2010, , p.445 He became Director in 1983 and at the request of the Government continued in that role until 1989.Hansard 22 July 1986
He also served as the chairman of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music from 1994 to 2000.Royal School of Music Annual Review 2000
He died on 21 May 2017 at the age of 89.
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