Thorough insightful biography

Having recently visited the Alan Turing memorial at Manchester I decided that I would like to find out more about him than the facts I knew from the film and short biographies I had read. I am so pleased that I opted for this biography written by a family member. It gives a through, thoughtful and tender insight into an individual of soaring genius but there is no reason to be a maths or computer specialist to appreciate how far ahead of his time Alan Turing was. The listener gets a very full account of his life from birth to his much too early death. Beautifully narrated I recommend it to anyone wishing to get a better understanding of a remarkable man.

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Accessible Turing biography.

Written by Alan Turing's nephew, this is more accessible than Hodges' comprehensive biography, and more up to date, as more documents as now available, and he was able to speak to some of those who knew his uncle. Even though Dermot Turing tells us Alan was little spoken of at home, the family connection does bring something extra to the narrative - and he is following in the footsteps of his father John and grandmother Sara in writing about this unusual genius.
Attitudes have evolved, too, so the occasional lapses of Hodges's account into outmoded terms aren't there to give the reader/listener an involuntary shiver from time to time.
The narrator is much better than Gordon Griffin, who tends to send me to sleep!

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1 person found this helpful

A fascinating life story, but too technical.

The narrator was excellent, managing to convey the different voices of various figures throughout Turing's life with impressive clarity
The book itself was well-researched and even looked into areas I didn't expect - like famous ancestors - which was certainly a pleasant surprise.
A word of warning to the unprepared reader, however; the book focused quite heavily on the more technical aspects of Turing's work. I would have preferred more interviews with those who knew him than on pages of droll explanations of computational mathematics, the specific mechanical workings of Enigma and the "bombes", and even the more esoteric work about the mathematics behind the formation of seashells and sunflowers. Fascinating to someone with that kind of expertise, I'm sure, but rather overwhelming to the likes of me.

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