To close friends, Alan Turing’s death was a trauma which even after decades remained unhealed. The Turing Test was talked about – and reflected in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001. The details of Turing’s codebreaking activities at Bletchley Park were not disclosed until the 1970s. He never put himself forward as the person who had conceived of the universal machine in 1936, and shown how to make it practical 10 years later. The point in about 1948 when he decided to have a more positive gay life was when there was a change from silence to active persecution. Turing was arrested on 7 February 1952 for his affair with a young Manchester man. He was obliged to undertake injections of female hormones intended to render him asexual. His death came more than two years after the arrest. Turing had shown defiance rather than shame. But as a gay man, he was particularly unlucky. What none of his friends knew in 1954 was that he had been the chief scientific figure in the codebreaking operation throughout World War II.
