World Jul 24, 2026 · 1 min read

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 argu...

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The Guardian
by Mark Brown North of England correspondent
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 academic

When 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.

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This article was originally published by The Guardian and written by Mark Brown North of England correspondent.

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