Alan Turing - Decoded

Alan Turing - Decoded

                                                                                                             

Front cover of the book:

Author: Dermot Turing                    

Genre: Biography

Published: 2015 - History press

Pages: 319

This is a Biography about Alan Turing who is famous for cracking the German Enigma during The World War II. He was also a mathematician who has completed quite a high level of education. The book contains his whole life story, including his achievements, interactions and his experiences during the war. The author of the book (Dermot) is the nephew of Alan Turing. A picture of him can be found above.This is a Biography about Alan Turing who is famous for cracking the German Enigma during The World War II. He was also a mathematician who has completed quite a high level of education. The book contains his whole life story, including his achievements, relations and his experiences during the war. The author of the book (Dermot) is the nephew of Alan Turing. A picture of him can be found above.

This book is written in chronological order and is very rich in information. The information part was very interesting to read, but the same cannot be said about the writing. In my opinion, the storyline wasn’t developed well enough and it was more of a factual book rather than a book about someone’s life. As a result, it didn’t flow too well, especially during the transitions. At the beginning of the book where Alan’s childhood was talked about, there were many details about his personality and surroundings. However, as he got older, less was mentioned about the person himself and more about what he was studying. I expected the author to elaborate more on the internal journey Alan was going through, especially during his time at Bletchley Park:

Paragraph on his childhood from the book:

"Alan did not have a fairy princess, and his relationship with his mother would forever be asymmetrical: from her side, Alan was the baby she had left at home; for him, Ethel was, if not a princess, something not dissimilar to the queen, or, to express it differently, Mother. But that is not to say that Alan had no family when he was growing up. Quite the contrary. He had the Wards, and the Wards were, certainly family"

This quote shows an example of how Alan's life is described at the beginning of the book. It explains the more complicated relationship he had with his mother.

Quote from during his time a Bletchley Park:

"Although Mr Truing may have arrived on 4 September 1939, his actual mobilisation had taken place considerably earlier. Upon recruitment, he had been earmarked for Dilly Knox's Research Section located in the Stableyard cottages, specifically to work on the breaking of messages encrypted on the German Enigma machine."

Compared to the previous quote, this one has a lot more concrete information and is almost completely like a factual book. It has no mention of how Alan Turing was feelings or reactions to the situation."

The language of the book was quite complex and used a some terminology that I didn’t always understand while reading it. So, despite the book not being very thick, it still took me longer than I expected to finish it. I think it is definitely better suited for someone slightly older or with more prior knowledge on mathematics, coding and the different formulas. This is because they would then understand what Alan Turing was working on in his career more.

What I liked about this book, was that it has quite a lot of photographs, letters and extra input besides what was written by the author. This helped me visualise his interactions and ideas at that time. There are letters which are relevant to the phases of his life, formula explanations and the work or notes he had written. Like mentioned above, the factual content of this biography is quite complete and detailed. It is clear that the author has conducted many forms of research and possibly interviews previous to the actual writing.

Example of written letter:

“My dear Mrs Morcom I am here for the ‘long’ so that your letter has just reached me from home. I remembered Chris’ birthday & would have written to you but for the fact that I found myself quite unable to express what I wanted to say. I suppose you saw that I had only 2nd in 1st part of Maths. I can hardly look anyone in the face after it. I won’t try to offer an explanation. I shall just have to get a 1 st in Mays to show I’m not really so bad as that.

Yours affectionately,

Alan M. Turing”

The letters played a huge part in helping me understand more about his interactions and character.

Although the language wasn’t the most interesting to read, I really enjoyed the book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in history or in Alan Turing. However, some prior knowledge or research would be beneficial if one were to completely comprehend the scientific or mathematical aspects of the book.