The Guardian World· World
Racy short story by Alan Turing offers glimpse of ‘playful, funny, cheeky’ side
Writing from year after gross indecency arrest challenges ‘isolated mathematician’ image, says Cambridge academicWhen people think of Alan Turing, they might imagine he was arrogant, isolated, humourless, tortured. A better way of remembering the father of modern computing would be, an academic argues, as “playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex”.The Cambridge University
Published Friday, 24 July 2026 at 04:00

Writing from year after gross indecency arrest challenges ‘isolated mathematician’ image, says Cambridge academicWhen people think of Alan Turing, they might imagine he was arrogant, isolated, humourless, tortured. A better way of remembering the father of modern computing would be, an academic argues, as “playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex”.The Cambridge University English literature professor Sarah Dillon has transcribed and studied a little-known short story that Turing wrote in the year after his arrest in Manchester for gross indecency. Continue reading...
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