WORK by a Golborne artist depicting a code-breaking machine that helped shorten the Second World War has been used on a limited edition stamp.

Steve Williams' painting depicts the Turing Bombe, a code-breaking machine developed by a team at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire and used to break the German's Enigma Code during the Second World War.

The stamp features on a specially issued sheet along with a study by Daniel J Rogers of Alan Turing, the mathematician who developed the Bombe and broke the code, which has been released by the Bletchley Park Post Office to commemorate the Turing Bombe being voted top engineering artefact by Engineering Institute.

The 67-year-old, who also runs art workshops in the borough, said: "My wife Carol and I went to visit Bletchley Park in 2009 and that just about coincided with my retirement. We met the director of the museum and she mentioned how they would like a couple of paintings.

"I have always painted so I did one for them which is now hung in the dining room of the house and through that I got to know other people at the park.

"Bletchley Park occasionally releases stamps which collectors will go out of there way to collect. I had done quite a few paintings now including an acrylic of Colossus, another code-breaking machine at Bletchley, and a water colour of the Bombe which they made a stamp out of and sold the original."

The stamps are currently being sold for £50 a sheet with all the money going to help maintain the park which is now a museum.

Mr Williams, of Farefield Avenue, said: "Breaking Enigma is thought to have shortened the war by about two years. By the back end of 1944, Bletchley Park was reading every message from the German command almost before their generals got them.

"Mr Turing was a bit of a character - he used to cycle to work with a gas mask on because he had hayfever."

The stamps release coincide with the release of The Imitation Game, a new film documenting the team's mission to crack the Enigma Code.