Codebreaker

One day ladies will be walking their

computers in the park and saying

'do you know, my iittie computer

said a very funny thing to me this morning'.

In 1952, the greatest

mathematician of his time

the man who gave birth to the

computer age was in torment.

He was a recently convicted criminal.

In distress, he turned to a psychiatrist.

So what did you say to the police?

I told them I'd been having

an affair with Arnold Murray

and that he'd given my

address to a young man

who was known to burgle

men he'd met for sex.

This man was Alan Turing.

Just a few years before, he'd helped

to turn the course of World War Two

by cracking Germany's

secret military codes.

Turing is one of the great original

thinkers of the 20th century.

He had thoughts that

nobody else was having.

Ten years earlier, he'd laid down

the foundations for the computer.

There's often a seed

that everything came from.

Alan Turing basically came up with

everything that computers do today.

During his lifetime, Turing's

achievements went unrecognised.

Instead he was disgraced.

But I can't get it outside myself to do it.

We all have decisions to make.

What are you saying?

I wish they'd leave me alone.

This film tells the story of Alan Turing

and how his ideas changed our world.

You may have something there, doctor.

The psychiatrist Alan Turing sought

help from was Doctor Franz Greenbaum

a German Jew who had fled to Britain

just before World War Two.

Presumably you'd like me to stop as well

but I can tell you now,

there's little point in trying.

Like you to stop what?

Pursuing... male...

Male?

Companionship.

We're not here for me,

you're here for you.

It doesn't matter to me what you do

as long as you're not in conflict over it.

Our father Franz Greenbaum

was treating Alan in the early 1950s.

He turned up in the most extraordinary

clothes when he came.

He looked as though he'd

been out of a rag bag.

I don't think our Dad was

in any way prejudiced...

towards homosexuality.

- Oh, I'm sure he wasn't. No.

At that time, in England,

that was considered quite way out.

So, how do we do this?

We talk.

What do I have to say?

You don't have to say anything.

But you should feel free

to say whatever you like.

There are some things I can't say,

things you can't know, about the war...

Things you can't even think.

There are some things about which

I'm under an obligation

a legal obligation, to remain discreet.

Well, there may be things

that you feel you can't discuss

but direct conversation is not the only way

that material gets conveyed.

How else does material get conveyed?

Through dreams, for instance.

Well then, I certainly won't be

telling you my dreams.

I am his nephew. That means that my father,

John, was Alan's older brother.

John and Alan were sons of the Empire.

Their father, my grandfather,

was in the Indian civil service.

When my father was four years old

and my grandmother is pregnant with Alan

they're sent back to England

and are left with a foster family

and they don't see their parents again

until my grandfather has

his next bout of long leave

which is going to be in several years' time.

I mean, I suspect that some of the

eccentricities or perhaps being withdrawn

or being able to disappear into his own world

could be attributed to some of that.

We're in the archive of Sherborne School

and this is a photograph from 1926.

Alan Turing, who was then 14,

is on the far left on the bottom row

looking at the camera very intently

with great concentration.

You almost wonder if he was thinking

about the camera and how it operated.

These are reports on his mathematics.

'He has considerable

powers of reasoning

and should do well if he can quicken up

a little and improve his style.'

His teachers didn't recognise they had

a tremendous mathematical genius in their midst.

This is the log book of the

Sherborne School library.

We see that he checked out Alice In Wonder/and

and Through the Looking-Glass

on 11th of April 1930.

Interestingly, there are three

books he took out that day.

Alice In Wonderland, Through the

Looking-Glass and The Game of Logic.

There's this wonderful picture

that his mother drew

called Hockey or Watching the Daisies grow.

And there is Alan with his hockey stick

ignoring the game, bending over

and studying the daisies.

I think he's a bit of a loner. I think

there's evidence of that from early on.

Turing was not someone who thrived

in social situations with lots of other people.

He was very athletic

but his sport of choice was running

which is of course a very solitary sport.

He had one very great friend

who was a boy named Christopher Morcom.

Morcom was, I think, more important to Turing

than any other human being in his life.

Turing was probably, in an adolescent way,

quite in love with him.

I think, in a way,

it was a kind of hero worship.

I think he did idolise him.

I think he worshipped him.

There was someone I knew at school

someone who didn't

at all approve of dirty talk.

Once or twice I tried to shock him

but it didn't work out.

What do you mean, it didn't work out?

He didn't take the bait.

He was just... above it.

He made me want to be good.

He was in a different house.

And boys in different houses

weren't meant to fraternise.

So I could only see him on Wednesdays

when we both happened to be in the library.

He would make fun of me

for my sloppy handwriting

for mistakes I made...

the careless errors.

He made me want

to improve my standards.

He was an example.

He was a friend.

I didn't care about his example.

What did you care about?

I cared about what I was in his eyes.

More so, in a sense,

than what I was in my own.

Morcom's influence on Turing

was absolutely enormous.

His importance was very,

very profound and very deep

both intellectually and emotionally.

Christopher was a great scientist with

tremendous gifts and tremendous curiosity

curiosity to match Turing's.

So they would often stargaze together.

They were both very

interested in astronomy.

They were more than just pals.

There was a great intimacy between them

but a very innocent... it was

entirely innocent of sexuality.

I think if you find a person like that

and I don't think

everybody does find one

in fact I think it's terribly rare

then all you thought before

all your plans for yourself,

you realise they were just filling a gap.

It was just something for you to do

while you were waiting for this person

and everything you want to be

is something for him, not yourself.

There is a drawback, however.

Finding such a person makes

everybody else appear so ordinary

and if anything happens to him

you've got nothing left

but to return to the ordinary world

and a kind of isolation

that never existed before.

At the beginning of December 1929

Chris and Alan went together up to Cambridge

for the scholarship examinations.

And at that time, they were both hoping that

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