Codebreaker Page #7

why the police were following Turing.

I suspect the reason was because

he was perceived as a major security risk.

We have to remember that 1952 was

the absolute height of Cold War paranoia

during which the idea of the homosexual traitor

was taking hold in the popular imagination.

Homosexuals must not

be handling top secret material.

The pervert is easy prey

to the blackmailer.

Turing fit the part perfectly.

We know that he had a lot

of classified, secret information

that he had gathered during

his time at Bletchley Park.

I think there was probably an assumption

that Turing might very well go rogue.

And so the police really began

to close in on him.

And this, I think,

is something very, very tragic.

I think he began to feel increasingly

that he had no freedom anymore

that he couldn't have

any kind of an ordinary life.

It's worth bearing in mind that at the same time

he was undergoing the organo therapy

which was playing havoc with his hormones.

It wasn't just Turing's body

that had been damaged.

His brain too had been affected.

We know from the medical evidence

that if you castrate a man

then you change his ability

to think and his ability to concentrate.

And if you take testosterone away,

then the brain will become muddled.

[Turing's voice] I've got a shocking tendency

at present to fritter my time away

in anything but what I ought to be doing.

I thought I'd found the reason for all this,

but that hasn't made things much better.

In April 1953, his oestrogen treatment ends.

Turing was perhaps expecting

things to change quickly

but his body was not responding in the way

that he may have thought it would have done.

The theory is if you stop exposure

of the male body to oestrogen

then slowly over time his testosterone

levels will begin to rise.

That's fine, in theory.

It can take many, many months, six, seven, eight,

nine months, to recover sexual function, if at all.

Some men report that they never

recover their sexual function

after they've taken

oestrogen therapy for that long.

Organo therapy was court-ordered at my trial

if I wanted to avoid prison.

They're hormones, female hormones.

They're meant to decrease my libido.

And they do... have.

But being hormones,

they also cause other physical reactions.

They say the effects are reversible.

Well, it ends there.

The thought ends there.

I don't know why I should have

gone to such lengths to avoid prison.

Being locked up with a bunch of ruffians?

I can imagine myself paying for that.

Should we go inside?

The condition of his life was becoming

increasingly untenable, increasingly grim.

Somewhere along the line,

something broke.

His ability to endure failed

and the suffering that he was undergoing

became, I suspect, overwhelming.

In May 1954, Alan Turing joined Franz Greenbaum

and his family on a day trip to Blackpool

a beach town in Northwest England.

Alan was wearing a stripy blazer

with the sleeves up here

on the white shirt

poking out from underneath.

So he really looked very strange.

There was a fortune teller's tent

on the promenade

and Alan decided that he would like

to go in and see the fortune teller.

And he went in there

and he was gone for a little while

and he came out and we looked at him

and he was ashen-faced

absolutely horrified expression on his face.

Do you know what's here?

What?

Signals. Radio signals. Just here.

The air is full of radio signals

flying past our heads

ready to be intercepted.

We all see different things.

Do you know honeybees

see by ultraviolet light?

Their eyes perceive a range of wavelengths

entirely different to what we can see as humans

and so, even though we're in the same world,

we see another world entirely.

When I went to see that

fortune teller in Blackpool

she told me one or two things

I suppose I didn't want to know.

What did she say?

Our session was private,

just like yours and mine.

But she saw things other people don't.

Rather like you.

He wouldn't divulge what had happened,

what the woman had said to him.

He was desperately, desperately unhappy.

And he didn't say anything more after that.

I don't think I'm allowed to travel anymore.

It doesn't matter what I say now, does it.

They think our sort are weak-willed

and so we're bound to talk

so f*** them, f*** them sideways.

I'll say whatever I please.

Alan, what's happened?

Nothing.

Nothing's happened.

Nothing new anyway, nothing different.

There must have come a moment

when he felt it just wasn't worth it.

That sense of despair.

Whatever the possibilities of his life, for him,

those possibilities didn't seem realistic anymore.

I've seen Snow White and

the Seven Dwarfs seven times.

That's 49 times I've seen a dwarf.

Do you ever wonder what poison

she soaks the apple in?

They don't say in the film.

She'd have had her pick.

Poisons appear everywhere in nature.

Some of the most beautiful flowers

contain the deadliest poisons.

Oleander, Rhododendron, Narcissus.

Do you know what their poison did to me?

It shrunk my testicles.

I grew breasts.

I, we all, worked to break Hitler

because what did he do?

Amongst other things?

He sterilised Jews. Jews like you.

We fought that bastard.

We defeated him.

And when we were finished,

what did they do to me?

And I'm supposed to allow it.

It would be despicable

to do that to anyone

but to do that to someone who ought to

have been treated as a national hero

seems to me especially despicable.

What he suffered was too profound

and too debilitating for him to recover from.

He suddenly saw what a

nasty place the world was.

There are things I can do.

We're all at war

all of us, all of the time,

each in our own little f***ing war.

What are you saying?

Don't worry. I'm not saying anything.

Although Snow White,

coupled with my own perverse thinking

did yield an amusing idea

as to how someone might kill himself

using an apple and electrical wiring.

That would be illegal.

Well, if a man were successful

the bastards would have to try

to pull him back from the mouth of hell

and I have to say -

though I'm not telling you this

it would almost be worth it

just to see them try.

We all have decisions to make.

I don't know what it was

that finally tipped him over the edge.

But I think you've got a mixture there

that is just at boiling point

and it won't take a lot more

to make it boil right over.

Mathematicians talk about

the beauty of numbers

but I know - because I was one -

they're talking about the computable

the beauty of what can be resolved.

But what about the rest,

the greater infinity?

What's not computable lies beyond

the infinitesimal sliver of knowledge

we've managed to subdue inside

our fragile, trembling human consciousness

a consciousness which is, in fact, decaying

within us from the moment we're born.

I won't be able to come

for dinner on Sunday.

I'm afraid I've made other plans.

Alan, come back! Sit down!

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