Undecidables

Stuart Hampshire

• Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
  Burnett, 587 pp, £18.00, October 1983, ISBN 0 09 152130 0

This is a very long biography, and before it appeared Alan Turing was not very well-known; his genius was of a kind that is not likely to be spread abroad. An immense amount of work has gone into this book, which expresses profound, and sometimes almost obsessional, admiration. It is not hagiography, but rather a study of a hero, an intellectual hero. I found it continuously readable and interesting, and it will, I think, be found moving and unforgettable by those who are ready to enter into the cryptographical and mathematical technicalities. The author quite often steps forward and gives the reader a piece of his mind on public issues, and his manner of presentation and style are as unlike those of an assured professional biographer as they could possibly be. But the style matches the subject. Alan Turing evidently was proud to be an odd-man-out: he insisted on informality in all circumstances, and even among his mathematical colleagues he seems to have cultivated an air of amateurishness. Mr Hodges gives a most convincing picture of this side of his character.