CHAPTER 2

The man with the terrible

trousers

sir john dermot turing

M

y uncle, Alan Turing, was not a well-dressed man. It is a tribute to those who

employed him that he was able to flourish in environments that ignored his refusal

to comply with social norms as much as he disregarded mindless social conven-

tions. Social conventions, however, became an increasingly powerful influence over his life.

Here I retell the story from the family perspective.

Caught on camera

There is an old photograph in the family album that shows Alan in his last years at Sherborne

(Fig.  2.1). It was taken in June 1930—a few months after his friend Christopher Morcom’s

death—and Alan looks relaxed and happy. But his trousers are a complete disgrace. It is not clear

who took the picture, but the timing suggests that it was done at Commemoration, the annual

festival at Sherborne to which parents and dignitaries are invited, and where boys, particularly

senior boys, should be smartly turned-out. Ordinarily, Alan’s mother (my grandmother) would

have intervened and spruced him up. But given that Alan was, like other boarding-school boys,

responsible for his own clothes, she probably had no control over him any more, if indeed she

ever had done.

Hazelhurst, 1922

My grandmother had had little direct control over Alan during his formative years. My grand-

father was serving the Empire in India, and she, as a good memsahib, was expected to be with

him to run his household. (From the distance of a century or so, this seems a waste of talent,

for my grandmother had a formidable intellect as well as many other gifts, and in a later age