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a friend of Bertrand Russell and G. H. Hardy and, like Turing, unapologetically gay. In 1945
he had published a strong endorsement of Soal’s work in the journal Philosophy, describing
it as providing ‘evidence which is statistically overwhelming for the occurrence not only of
telepathy, but of precognition’.^19 ‘Overwhelming’ was, of course, the word that Turing used in
‘Computing machinery and intelligence’ to characterize the evidence for ESP.
In 1949, the year that Turing moved from Cambridge to Manchester, a flurry of attention
was paid to ESP. In September alone the word ‘telepathy’ appeared sixteen times in The Times of
London: before that, it had not appeared in The Times since 1932.
Two events had provoked this sudden surge of interest. The first was an address by the
esteemed zoologist Alister Hardy in Newcastle, who declared:^20
If telepathy has been established, as I believe it has, then such a revolutionary discovery should
make us keep our minds open to the possibility that there may be so much more in living things
and their evolution than our science has hitherto led us to expect.
The second was a series of eight broadcasts on the BBC’s ‘Light programme’, featuring the
Piddingtons, an Australian couple who claimed to be able to communicate with each other
telepathically. Among other feats, Sydney Piddington in one BBC studio imparted to his
blindfolded wife in another studio the name of one of fifteen film stars, songs, and (in homage
to Rhine) diagrams; Lesley Piddington in turn correctly guessed that the film star was John
Mills, the song was ‘On our return’, and the diagram was a square. The broadcasts provoked a
media frenzy, with articles about the Piddingtons running not just in the tabloids but in such
highbrow publications as The New Statesman. The couple inspired cartoons, jokes, and even a
catchphrase: ‘to do a Piddington’.^21
Needless to say the SPR was aware of, and had strong opinions about, both Hardy’s speech
and the Piddingtons’ broadcasts. On 14/15 September successive letters ran in The Times under
the headline ‘TELEPATHY’. The first, supporting Hardy, was written by S. G. Soal. The second,
criticizing the BBC for its sponsorship of the Piddingtons, was sent under the aegis of the SPR.
This letter, with Broad as one of its three signatories, read in part:^22
The faculty known as telepathy has for over 70 years been the subject of scientific investigation,
and lately of experiment under laboratory conditions . . . It would be most regrettable if any
confusion were created in the public mind between serious researches of this kind and the
performances which the B.B.C. has been broadcasting.
Although The Times itself drew no explicit connection between Hardy’s lecture and the
Piddingtons’ ‘performances’, an unsigned article in the 24 September issue of Nature did:
As a result of the recent work on telepathy mentioned by Prof. Hardy, public interest in the
subject has been re-awakened. This, unfortunately, has led to a wave of popular credulity which
has become somewhat disturbing to workers in psychical research, since it has affected persons
of education and even scientific standing in their own particular fields.
In the view of the SPR, the crime of which the Piddingtons were guilty was declining to
participate in laboratory tests of their capacities at the SPR’s headquarters.^23
Such then was the situation with parapsychology in England when Alan Turing began work
on ‘Computing machinery and intelligence’. Not only was ESP in the news, but reputable scien-
tists were asserting that it would only be a matter of time before it would be proven to be a fact
of nature. The posture that these scientists took was not dissimilar to Turing’s own in regard