Resurfaced Alan Turing short story sheds light on how he felt about being gay
Alan Turing (Getty Images)
A newly transcribed short story written by Alan Turing challenges the long-standing image of the genius as isolated and ashamed of his sexuality, revealing instead a man who was “playful, funny, cheeky” and “really liked sex”.
The semi-autobiographical story, Pryce’s Buoy, was written shortly after Turing’s arrest in 1952 and offers a fictionalised account of how he met his lover, Arnold Murray
It had sat in the archives of King’s College, Cambridge, since he died in 1954, but has now been fully transcribed by Cambridge literature professor Sarah Dillon.
“We’ve distilled a version of Turing that is a two-dimensional stereotype,” Dillon said. “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.”
In the story, Turing casts himself as “Alec Pryce”, a celebrated scientist who “always liked to parade his homosexuality… in suitable company”, and who sets out to find a lover after finishing a scientific paper. Turing writes of Alec feeling unusually at ease in another man’s company, where he normally “felt self-conscious”.
It was Turing’s real relationship with Murray that led to his prosecution for “gross indecency” and chemical castration, after he reported a burglary linked to Murray. He was found dead from cyanide poisoning in 1954, in what an inquest ruled a suicide.
The manuscript ends mid-sentence on its sixth page, suggesting more once existed.
“There was clearly more, and that’s so frustrating,” Dillon said. “We don’t know if Turing’s mum censored it. Did it get more sexually explicit? How did it end?”
She said the story captured a man using literature to understand himself: “This was the moment when he really felt a release, a chance to be more creative and playful.”
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