As Turing’s biographer Andrew Hodges, on whose book this film is based, has said, it is “ludicrous” to imagine that two people working separately at Bletchley would even have met. Cairncross was at Bletchley Park, but he was in a different unit from Turing. The Imitation Game puts John Cairncross, a Soviet spy and possible “Fifth Man” of the Cambridge spy ring, on Turing’s cryptography team. Colossus, the first programmable digital electronic computer, was built at Bletchley Park by engineer Tommy Flowers, incorporating Turing’s ideas. The digital computer Turing invented was known as the Universal Turing Machine. In real life, the machine that cracked Enigma was called the Bombe, and the first operating version of it was named Victory. This one has sentimentalised them, too: fusing A Beautiful Mind with Frankenstein to portray Turing as the ultimate misunderstood boffin, and the Christopher machine as his beloved creation. It’s understandable that films about complicated science usually simplify the facts. Turing builds an Enigma-code-cracking machine, which he calls Christopher. Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game Photograph: Allstar/Black Bear Pictures/Sportsphoto Ltd The housemaster’s speech (to all the boys, not just him) announcing Morcom’s death was kind and comforting. In reality, though, Turing had been warned before his friend died that he should prepare for the worst.
The film is right that this awful event had a formative impact on Turing’s life. Turing is summoned into the headmaster’s office, and is told coldly that the object of his affection has died of bovine tuberculosis. Turing nurtures a youthful passion for Morcom, and is about to declare his love when Morcom mysteriously fails to return after a holiday. Young Turing (played strikingly well by Alex Lawther) is a lonely, awkward boy, whose only friend is a kid called Christopher Morcom.
It isn’t accurate about any of them, but the least wrong bits are the 1928 ones. The Imitation Game jumps around three time periods – Turing’s schooldays in 1928, his cryptographic work at Bletchley Park from 1939-45, and his arrest for gross indecency in Manchester in 1952. Photograph: Sherborne School/AFP/Getty Images Alan Turing as a 16-year-old at Sherborne School, Dorset, in 1928.
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