COPElAND & BOwEN | 5
As she departed again for her next stint in India, she was
left with the painful memory of his rushing down the school drive with arms flung wide in pur-
suit of our vanishing taxi.
The unsociable and dreamy child had been thrust into boarding school life at the tender age
of 9. An adolescence of persecution and fagging awaited him. His first school was Hazelhurst,
near Tunbridge Wells, a prep school for sons of the upper classes. At the age of 14 he moved on
to Sherborne School in Dorset: founded in 1550 and built in the shadow of Sherborne Abbey,
the place looked like a monastery. Turing arrived by bicycle, alone and dishevelled. ‘I am Turing’,
he announced.^5
Our timeline picks up the story from Turing’s arrival at his new home.
Turing's timeline
1926 The 14-year-old Turing bicycles more than 60 miles from Southampton to
his new school.
1927/8 Aged 15½, he writes a précis of Einstein’s book ‘The Theory of Relativity’.
1929 His parents pay to put his name down for King’s College, Cambridge.
1930 School friend Christopher Morcom dies of tuberculosis.
1931 Goes up to King’s on a scholarship. Immerses himself in mathematics and in
King’s gay culture.
Plays bridge and tennis, rows, skis, enjoys theatre and opera, practises his
second-hand violin.
figure 1.2 Alan Turing aged 16, 17, 18, and 19 in school photographs at Sherborne School.
Images provided courtesy of Sherborne School.