28 | 2 THE mAN wITH THE TERRIBlE TROUSERS
home—to use an anachronism, it was something that his mother would not be able to compute.
Alan had found his brother’s exasperated handling of the case insensitive, with unworthy words
exchanged, which both of them regretted. These wounds needed time to heal, but time was run-
ning out. Within two years Alan was dead, apparently by his own hand. And social convention
had a continuing role to play even then.
At the time of Alan’s death in 1954, his mother was in Italy on holiday. John once again was
the one to receive the call from Manchester, and took on the management of what had plenty of
potential for more tabloid sensationalism. Worse, when he arrived in Manchester, John learned
from Alan’s psychiatrist that one of Alan’s ‘diaries’ was missing: in the diaries Alan had com-
mitted to paper a range of emotions and catalogued his tortured assessments of other people.
To have the diaries adduced in evidence in the coroner’s court, with his mother and the nation’s
press listening to his unfilial remarks, was wholly unthinkable. John searched the house and at
last found the diary. Nowadays there are still those who argue that the inquest was a whitewash,
or at least superficial, but avoiding the distraction of this unwanted material coming onto the
record was what John believed to be the right thing to do. And you did not have to look far to
find plenty of other evidence, both physical and psychological, to explain the causes of Alan’s
death.
Alan Turing was evidently not the only gay man to be prosecuted in the 1950s. The law—and
the resources being devoted to headline-grabbing prosecutions of celebrities—were in disre-
pute. Only two months after Alan’s death, in the last days of Churchill’s final premiership, a
committee was set up under Sir John Wolfenden to consider the law and practice relating to
homosexual offences and the treatment by the courts of persons convicted.^9 The committee
recommended decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults in private, but
unfortunately their findings came too late to help Alan. At least the law was changed in the
1960s; but resetting social attitudes, so that gay people might not be thought of as having a
‘mental condition such as requires treatment’, has taken much longer.
Great Britain and beyond, 2012
In contrast to 1952, the year 2012 brought much to celebrate. How pleasing that, along with
the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the successes of the UK-hosted
Olympic Games, 2012 was also about Alan’s ideas: the influence that he had on the foundations
of mathematics, on computing, on cryptology, and on developmental biology, not to mention
linguistic philosophy concerning the verb ‘to think’—each continues to stimulate new thought
and research.
The conferences and events that took place in 2012 allowed academics and others to stand
back and draw lessons from Alan’s life and work. He now stands as a positive role model. In this
context, one thing of particular note was a speech in Leeds in October 2012 by the director of
the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). He paid an important centenary
tribute to Alan Turing, but the keynote of his address was the importance of finding talent
and skills in diversity. That was something that Bletchley Park had succeeded in doing in war-
time, even if those values were lost sight of in post-war society. Bletchley’s wartime culture of
diversity is now regarded as exemplary, and has been drawn on as a model for a civil service
recruiting drive. Social convention has moved to a different direction, and one in which future
Alan Turings might find it easier to thrive.