The pardon captured the public imagination and was received with elation as a fairy-story Christmas present. But its principle was less elevated: it conceded the plea made in Turing’s defence at his trial in 1952, that he was a national asset. It was an act of pulling rank which, in 1952, Hugh Alexander’s advocacy had not been able to achieve, but sixty years later, dressed up with the formal magic of monarchy, was widely applauded.
Queen Elizabeth’s reign had begun with Turing’s arrest, giving extra piquancy to the medieval language of the Royal Pardon, but those unfamiliar with the decorative aspects of the British constitution should appreciate that this was simply an executive action by the government. Its language recognised Turing as exceptional in his service of the state, and thus re-emphasised the central question of Turing’s relationship with that state. But even by 1954, the state that really counted was on the other side of the Atlantic. What did American authorities know of what transpired in 1951–52, and how did they react, given that Turing had explicitly been granted special access to US secrets? Was he vetted under US-inspired rules in 1948? Did he knowingly flout the new rules when he started cruising the Manchester milk bar in 1950? Did British authorities convey the reality of Turing’s sex tourism in Europe in 1952–53? What demands, threats and surveillance did Turing have to deal with as a result? None of this was addressed.
The petitioners for the pardon explicitly said Turing was sui generis, and that a pardon would create no precedent to apply to anyone else. It was granted on that exceptional basis. So it left Arnold Murray, who was charged in exactly the same way as Turing, unpardoned: no reference was even made to whether he was still alive (he was not). Readers of this book will see that Turing himself took great interest in the background and character of this vulnerable young man, writing a short story based on his breaching of class barriers. It is hard to believe that Turing would have been high-minded enough actually to object if the trial had been stopped on the grounds of his rank, and the whole thing hushed up. On the other hand, it is also hard to believe that he would rejoice in an exception being made for himself while so oppressive a law was enforced on thousands of others.
In 1950, Turing had written a description of what would now be called ‘the butterfly effect’, ending with a man being killed by an avalanche, and when writing his short story, the events of 1951–52 might have appeared to him in just this light. We now have a further glimpse of the chance events which precipitated the crisis. Amidst that scene on the Oxford Road, as described on p. 540, was an eighteen-year-old lad on weekend leave from the Navy. He recognised and greeted Alan Turing in the milk bar – not as a mathematician, but as a champion amateur runner. This young man, Alan Edwards, later noticed Turing connect with Arnold Murray. An athlete himself, of keen intelligence, and very clear about his homosexual identity, Alan Edwards would have made a far more suitable boy. But, by the cussedness of human nature, Alan Turing was not his type. Not because he was too old, but because he was too similar, being lithe and fit.
Another witness has emerged to the importance of running in Turing’s life, even after his competitive days were over. This is Alan Garner, famous for The Owl Service (1967). In 2011 he told a story that he alone knew. He had been Alan Turing’s training partner; they had run perhaps a thousand miles together through Cheshire country lanes in 1951–52. Garner was seventeen in 1951, and a sixth-former at Manchester Grammar School, studying classics. The meeting arose in that year, as fellow athletes spotting each other on the road. From the start, Garner felt himself treated as an equal, something he could appreciate and cope with because of this school’s distinctive ambience (a culture that yet another Alan has evoked in The History Boys). He was also just about to become a serious competitive young sprinter. Their disparate long- and short-distance strengths were compatible with an equal pace over a run of several miles. Equality also was found in banter full of word play and scurrilous humour. It came as no surprise to Garner when Turing asked him if he thought intelligent machinery was possible. After running silently for ten minutes, along Mottram Road, Alderley Edge, he said no. Turing did not argue. ‘Why learn classical languages?’ Turing asked, and Garner said, ‘You have to learn to use your brain in a different way’: the kind of answer that Turing would have appreciated.
Their chat kept away from the personal: it was focused on sustaining the six or seven miles of running. But once, probably late in 1951, Turing mentioned the story of Snow White. ‘You too!’ said Garner, amazed. For he connected immediately with a singular event from his childhood. It was his first cinema outing when five years old. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs had terrified him with the image of the poisoned apple. Turing responded with immediate empathy. ‘He used to go over the scene in detail, dwelling on the ambiguity of the apple, red on one side, green on the other, one of which gave death.’ Their shared trauma – as Garner saw it – remained a bond.
The training extended into 1952 and overlapped with the period of Turing’s trial. Turing never spoke of what he was undergoing and somehow Garner only heard the news late in 1952, when he was warned by the police not to associate with Turing. Garner was very angry at this, and at what he learnt had happened, and he never had the least sense of having been approached in any predatory way. And yet, inevitably, it ended sadly. Alan Garner painfully recalls seeing Turing for the last time in 1953, as a fellow passenger on the bus from Wilmslow to Manchester. Being with his girlfriend, Garner found it too difficult to say anything appropriate and so he pretended not to have noticed his presence. This incident, so redolent of the fiction and film of final teenage years, was soon followed by Garner’s departure to National Service, during which he heard of Turing’s death. Alan Garner revealed nothing of this for sixty years.4
Alan Turing would naturally have delighted to see a lad from a very ordinary Cheshire village background showing such curiosity and intellectual ambition. But it is as though he also saw something extra in Garner, sensing a writer of the future who would combine modernity and mythology. The story of the apple is like a glimpse of the Jungian analysis he went in for after 1952, of which we know virtually nothing. It is also striking to know that when Turing saw Snow White at its Cambridge release in 1938 (p. 189) a five-year-old boy was reacting in parallel, and one day would share it. The year 1938 was Turing’s year of choice: he chose to return from America and chose active engagement with war rather than pure mathematics. He accepted secrecy and the death of innocence. That the apple had already figured in a suicide plan (p. 164) must have made the film scene an intense (and as Garner saw it, traumatic) image. His analyst, Franz Greenbaum, might have been the perfect confidant in working out such conflicts, but state secrecy would have made it impossible for Turing to convey the true seriousness of his situation. His total isolation in 1954 is virtually impossible to conceive of in today’s world.
It will be surprising if any more such witnesses emerge, but further personal documents do exist and may eventually become available. Meanwhile, this Preface ends with a few gems of writing which surfaced too late for the 1983 book, but were included in the 1992 preface. They are given again here.
A cosy continuity between King’s College, Cambridge, and the pre-war codebreaking establishment is evoked by some brief letters placed in the King’s archive in 1990. ‘Dilly Knox, who is my boss, sends you greetings,’ wrote Turing on 14 September 1939 to the Provost, John Sheppard. ‘It is always a joy to have you here,’ wrote back the Provost, encouraging him to visit. The economist J. M. Keynes, who looked after the question of Turing’s fellowship for the duration of the war, also knew the older generation of codebreakers (and indeed had apparently enjoyed an intimate relation with the ‘boss’). These connections lend further colour to my description (p. 148) of how in 1938 Turing’s interest in ciphers could have been transmitted to the British government, thus making possible his fateful appointment.
The following account, which in 1983 was only available in Polish, also concerns the early m
onths of the war.5 It settles the question raised in note 4.10 as to whether Turing was the personal emissary who took the new perforated sheets to the Polish and French cryptanalysts. Indeed he was: there is no mistaking his voice in this account of their farewell supper.
In a cosy restaurant outside Paris staffed by Deuxième Bureau workers, the cryptologists and the chiefs of the secret decryptment centre, Bertrand and Langer, wished to spend an evening in a casual atmosphere free of everyday concerns. Before the dishes ordered and the choice wine selected for the occasion had been served, the attention of the diners was drawn to a crystal flower glass with flowers, placed on the middle of the tablecloth. They were delicate rosy-lilac flowers with slender, funnel-shaped calyces. It was probably Langer who uttered their German and then their Polish names: ‘Herbstzeitlose … Zimowity jesienne …’
This meant nothing to Turing, as he gazed in silence at the flowers and the dry lanceolate leaves. He was brought back from his reverie, however, by the Latin name, Colchicum autumnale (autumn crocus, or meadow saffron), spoken by mathematician-geographer Jerzy Rózycki.
‘Why, that’s a powerful poison!’ said Turing in a raised voice.
To which Rózycki slowly, as though weighing each word, added: ‘It would suffice to bite into and suck at a couple of stalks in order to attain eternity.’
For a moment there was an awkward silence. Soon, however, the crocuses and the treacherous beauty of the autumnal flowers were forgotten, and an animated discussion began at the richly laid table. But despite the earnest intention of the participants not to raise professional questions, it proved impossible to get completely away from Enigma. Once again, there was talk of the errors committed by German operators and of the perforated sheets, now machine-rather than handmade, which the British sent in series from Bletchley to the Poles working at Gretz-Armainvillers, outside Paris. The inventor of the perforated sheets, Zygalski, wondered why their measurements were so peculiar, with each little square being about eight and a half millimetres on a side.
‘That’s perfectly obvious,’ laughed Alan Turing. ‘It’s simply one-third of an inch!’
This remark in turn gave rise to a dispute as to which system of measures and currency, the traditionally chaotic British one or the lucid decimal system used in France and Poland, could be regarded as the more logical and convenient. Turing jocularly and eloquently defended the former. What other currency in the world was as admirably divided as the pound sterling, composed of 240 pence (20 shillings, each containing 12 pence)? It alone enabled three, four, five, six or eight persons to precisely, to the penny, split a tab (with tip, generally rounded off to a full pound) at a restaurant or pub.
The dark tone of Turing’s knowledge of poisonous plants, arising unexpectedly in the midst of secret work and mathematical banter, recalls the manner of his death. The shock of that event is vividly portrayed by another first-hand account, that written by Turing’s housekeeper Mrs Clayton on the night of Tuesday 8 June 1954:
My dear Mrs Turing
You will by now have heard of the death of Mr Alan. It was such an awfull shock. I just didn’t know what to do. So I flew across to Mrs Gibson’s and she rang Police & they wouldn’t let me touch or do a thing & I just couldn’t remember your address. I had been away for the weekend and went up tonight as usual to get his meal. Saw his bedroom light on the lounge curtains not drawn back, milk on steps & paper in door. So I thought he’d gone out early & forgot to put his light off so I went & knocked at his bedroom door. Got no answer so walked in, Saw him in bed he must have died during the night. The police have been up here, again tonight for me to make a statement & I understand the inquest will be Thursday. Shall you or Mr [John] Turing be coming over[?] I feel so helpless & not able to do anything. The Webbs removed last Wed. & I don’t know their new address yet. Mr & Mrs Gibson saw Mr Alan out walking Mon. evening he was perfectly all right then. The weekend before he’d had Mr Gandy over for the weekend & they seemed to have had a really good time. The Mr & Mrs Webb came to dinner Tues. & Mrs Webb had aftern[oon] tea with him Wed. the day she removed.
You do know you have my very deepest sympathy in your great loss & what I can do to help at this end you know I will continue to do so.
Yours respectfully, S. Clayton
This account indicates how the police took charge of the house immediately, leaving open the possibility that there was information in official hands not made public at the inquest. It is now in the archive at King’s College.
The police also feature in two valuable letters written by Alan Turing himself to his friend Norman Routledge, and now also in the archive. The first, undated, must be from early 1952:
My dear Norman,
I don’t think I really do know much about jobs, except the one I had during the war, and that certainly did not involve any travelling. I think they do take on conscripts. It certainly involved a good deal of hard thinking, but whether you’d be interested I don’t know. Philip Hall was in the same racket and on the whole, I should say, he didn’t care for it. However I am not at present in a state in which I am able to concentrate well, for reasons explained in next paragraph.
I’ve now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10:1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven’t the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I’ve not found out.
Glad you enjoyed broadcast. J[efferson] certanly was rather disappointing though. I’m rather afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future
Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think
Yours in distress, Alan.
The allusion to the traditional syllogism about Socrates, who drank the hemlock, is an extraordinary piece of black humour. (It also stands as a superb example of how Turing himself fused the elements of his life.) The opening of the letter is perhaps equally remarkable in its absurdly off-hand description of six years of crucial wartime work, and in its inexplicable statement that the work had not involved any travelling.
The second is dated February 22, and must be from 1953:
My dear Norman
Thanks for your letter. I should have answered it earlier.
I have a delightful story to tell you of my adventurous life when next we meet. I’ve had another round with the gendarmes, and it’s positively round II to Turing. Half the police of N. England (by one report) were out searching for a supposed boyfriend of mine. It was all a mare’s nest.
Perfect virtue and chastity had governed all our proceedings. But the poor sweeties never knew this. A very light kiss beneath a foreign flag under the influence of drink, was all that had ever occurred. Everything is now cosy again except that the poor boy has had rather a raw deal I think. I’ll tell you all when we meet in March at Teddington. Being on probation my shining virtue was terrific, and had to be. If I had so much as parked my bicycle on the wrong side of the road there might have been 12 years for me. Of course the police are going to be a bit more nosy, so virtue must continue to shine.
I might try to get a job in France. But I’ve also been having psychoanalysis for a few months now, and it seems to be working a bit. It’s quite fun, and I think I’ve got a good man. 80% of the time we are working out the significance of my dreams. No time to write about logic now!
Ever, Alan
The style is a reminder that whilst Turing’s plain-speaking English might be compared with that of Orwell or Shaw, it also had a strong element of P. G. Wodehouse. Both letters perhaps indicate a state of denial about the seriousness with which those in charge of the nosy ‘sweeties’ would contemplate his Euro-adventures.
Alan Turing used
logarithms of betting odds as the key to the work he had done for the ‘racket’ of cryptography, and his sustained fascination with probability is illustrated by that reference to a one-in-ten chance of being caught. In his 1953 stoic humour there is a link with innocent Anti-War undergraduate days of twenty years earlier, when he analysed Alfred Beuttell’s Monte Carlo gambling system. While the tectonic forces of geopolitics ground away, Alan Turing dodged his way through as a nimble, insouciant, individual. The lucky streak did not last for ever.
As well as supplying addenda, this Preface must also confess to corrigenda. Inevitably, a number of errors are perpetuated by reprinting this text. Here are some examples. Note 2.11 severely understates the significance of Turing’s work on normal numbers and of his friend David Champernowne’s 1933 contribution. It seems possible that Turing’s study of such infinite decimals suggested his model of ‘computable numbers’. Note 3.40 on Turing’s work on the Skewes number is inaccurate: his incomplete manuscript actually dates from about 1950 when he briefly resumed this work, and corresponded briefly with Skewes. Audrey née Bates (p. 505) did more interesting and substantial work than is suggested; her Master’s thesis involved representing Church’s lambda calculus on the Manchester computer, an advanced idea which was never published. This sharpens the point made on the footnote on that page, concerning how Turing failed to turn his vision for programming and logic into the creation of a lively school of research and innovation. One clue to the problems he faced comes from her recollection that ‘Max Newman made the immortal statement that “there is nothing to do with computers that merits a Ph.D.”’ Further additional and corrective material may be found on www.turing.org.uk.
Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game Page 3