Turing nephew: Saying my uncle won World War Two is nonsense
ALAN Turing was not hounded to death by the state and only played a minor role in the war effort with his work at Bletchley Park, his nephew has claimed.
Dermot Turing, 60, said codebreaking was only a ‘tiny part’ of his uncle’s life as he decried the fascination with his work during the Second World War.
And he dismissed the mythology surrounding his uncle’s legacy, dismissing the idea that Britain won the war through codebreaking rather than fighting as ‘nonsense’.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival this week, Dermot said: ‘Alan Turing would have been made sick by this focus on his trial and the Bletchley Park thing.
‘I am sure he was very proud of [it] but it was just a tiny part of his life and wasn’t his career.’
Mathematician Turing invented the British Bombe which was one of the main methods used to crack Germany’s Enigma-enciphered messages during the war.
His actions have been credited as playing a major role in ending the Second World War – including in the 2014 biopic The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch.
But his nephew played down his role at Bletchley Park and said Polish codebreakers had come up with the basis for cracking the German machine.
‘It [Turing’s creation] didn’t work too well but by the time of the Battle of Britain they had a souped-up version,’ Dermot said.
‘Turing’s main work at Bletchley Park was done by 1939 before Britain was really at war.’ Dermot also dismissed ideas that Turing took his own life because of his conviction for being gay. Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 for his relationship with a man and he chose to be chemically castrated over going to jail.
But Dermot says evidence from his uncle’s archives suggest he had returned to his ‘normal self’ days after his trial ended and that his ‘mood had lifted’ shortly before his death.
He believes that Turing’s decision to take his own life by poisoning himself with cyanide in 1954, aged 41, could have been over ‘boyfriend trouble’.
He added: ‘It is trite and simplistic to assume that because he was convicted and put on this hormone treatment and took his own life within two years of that happening that these two things were causally related.
‘But they are not. If you look at the documentary evidence, it is quite clear by the time he was off the hormone treatment, his mood was lifted and back to being normal.
‘In fact, he was probably back to being his normal self within days of the trial finishing. He was quite defiant and positive about the whole thing.’
‘Codebreaking was just a tiny part’