A new transcription of an account that the late math genius and WWII Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing wrote about his life as a gay man in 1950s Britain challenges notions that he felt shame about his sexuality or didn’t have much of a life outside of his work.
“Pryce’s Buoy” is a short story that was handwritten by Turing shortly after his arrest in 1952 and is a semi-autobiographical description of how he met his lover Arnold Murray.
The story had been held in the archives of Kings College Cambridge since Turing’s death in 1954, but it’s only now that the work has been fully studied and transcribed by Cambridge professor of literature Sarah Dillon so that anyone can read it.
“We’ve distilled a version of Turing that is a two-dimensional stereotype,” says Dillon, a Professor at Cambridge’s Faculty of English.
“He’s come to be seen as socially unaware, entirely concerned with logic and numbers, and pretty isolated.
“His short story reveals a very different man: playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex.”
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Story explores Turing’s life before arrest
It was his relationship with Murray that resulted in his prosecution and chemical castration for “gross indecency” after his house was burgled by an acquaintance of Murray and he reported it to the police.
Turing was found dead from cyanide poisoning in June of 1954.
An inquest at the time ruled that he had killed himself, though others have suggested that he may have accidentally poisoned himself during an experiment that he had been conducting in a spare room in his home.
Interestingly, Professor Dillon reveals that Turing wrote to a friend, Norman Routledge, about his intention of writing it all down.
“I’ve now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered quite a possibility for me,” Turing wrote to Routledge in early 1952.
“I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offences with a young man.
“The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one, which I shall have to make into a short story one day, but haven’t time to tell you now.
“No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I’ve not found out.”
“Alec” and “Ron”
In the story, “Alec Pryce” a lauded scientist who “always liked to parade his homosexuality … in suitable company” acts as Turing’s alias.
After getting “rather exhausted with his Christmas shopping” and delivering a paper on “interplanetary travel” he decides to seek a lover.
“It was quite some time now since he had ‘had’ anyone, in fact not since he had met that soldier in Paris last summer,” Turing wrote.
“Now that his paper was finished he might justifiably consider that he had earned another young man, and he knew where he might find one who might be suitable.”
The story then switches to the perspective of “Ron Miller” a working class sex worker who is waiting in a park and hoping to pick up a client when he spots “Alec” walking by.
“That chap who was walking round the place had given him quite a look last time he came past,” Turing wrote.
Professor Sarah Dillon with Alan Turing’s short story. Photo: King’s College, Cambridge“There he was coming round again. This time Ron stared back, and Alec faltered in his walk and hurried on round the plot again.
“No doubt now of what he wanted. Didn’t seem to have the nerve though. Better give him a little encouragement if he came past again.
“Ron caught Alec’s eye and gave him a half-hearted smile. It was enough though. Alec approached the park seat; Ron made room for him and he sat down.”
Alec decides, “This chap would do well enough. Not a real beauty, but had a certain appeal,” and invites him to lunch in a nearby restaurant.
At the restaurant, Turing writes about feeling comfortable about being in the company of another man.
“Alec was enjoying himself now. Usually when he went to a restaurant he felt self-conscious, either for being alone, or for not doing the right thing,” Turing wrote.
Did Turing finish the story?
The sixth page of the story ends with the start of an incomplete sentence, “Ron wouldn’t…” suggesting that Turing wrote at least one more page of the story, and that there may be other pages still yet to be discovered.
“There was clearly more, and that’s so frustrating,” says Dillon.
“We don’t know where the rest of it went. We don’t know if Turing’s mum censored it. Did it get more sexually explicit? How did it end? That’s frustrating, but everything else is so exciting.”
“Turing died when he was only 41, and in those years running up to his death, he was trying to understand himself and his world. Literature offered him a really powerful way of doing that.
“This was the moment when he really felt a release, a chance to be more creative and playful.”
You can read all six surviving pages of the story under Appendix: ‘Pryce’s Buoy’ here.
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