Thanks to Rosie Croft of Pen & Sword for providing me a paperback copy of this book that I freely chose to review.

I have forever been intrigued by personal accounts of events I’ve only ever heard of through history books or TV documentaries, as the narrative always seems to focus on the overall campaign or the big events, rather than on the everyday reality of the people who lived through it. These days there is a move towards making sure that all experiences are captured (mass observation archives are fundamental for that), and I think this is a positive step. History is not only what happens to the kings, queens, members of government and those in authority. It affects us all.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a fan of mysteries, puzzles, and riddles, and the story behind Bletchley Park, the Enigma machines, and the efforts to decode the German messages (not only the German messages, but mostly) during WWII make for a fascinating real story, and one that was kept secret for many years. When I saw this book, I knew I had to check it.

Robert Harris provides the foreword for this book, whose content seems right out of one of his own novels. The book, divided into eight chapters (Codes and War, Bletchley Park, 1940: A Fateful Year, Battle of the Atlantic, North Africa and Italy, The Resistance, Towards Victory in Europe, War in the Pacific), contains also images, a chronology, a detailed bibliography and sources, including a list of documents from the Imperial War Museum, and an index, which will facilitates any research tasks for those readers looking for some specific information.

This volume is not a simple collection of letters or interviews with code breakers, but its content is organized around specific themes, and the narrative offers a fairly comprehensive historical background to each chapter. Readers are not required to be experts on WWII to follow the book, and most of them are likely to finish the book with a better working knowledge of the conflict and, in particular, of the role the code breakers played in it. I don’t think people who are particularly knowledgeable about the war will discover any new information in the storyline, but the letters and the personal accounts will provide them with insights into what it was really like to live through some of the situations and a better understanding of the role these men and women played in the war effort.

This tome taught me much I didn’t know, and I enjoyed the personal accounts in particular. Some of the highlights for me were: the fairly detailed explanations and examples of how the decoding worked and what roles different people played in the process, comments about how Bletchley was organised, how cold the huts were, how many hours they spent working there, the fact that they needed tall people to work with “the Bombe” because they had to reach the top of the huge machine, what the staff did in their limited spare time, Alan Turing’s quirks, the importance of capturing the coding tables from German U-boats… Of course, there were coders working aboard ships, in other countries, there were spies working abroad, and there are numerous accounts that bring to life different war scenarios, like the fear of being aboard a navy vessel in a convoy while waiting for the German submarines to strike, or being sent into a sinking German submarine trying to retrieve as much information as possible… Oh, and the Navajos using their own language to flummox any enemies trying to decode their messages.  

I recommend this book to people interested in WWII, particularly in the role the communication specialists and the code breakers played in shortening the length of the war. Anybody researching the topic will find it full of useful material, and the bibliography and the list of documents will further assist their search. And, casual readers will likely feel, like me, amazed at how these people managed to crack the codes at a time when technology was so basic. We can see the first steps towards the development of modern computers, and I, for one, want to visit Bletchley Park and see, with my own eyes, where everything started.

Honestly, I spent the entirety of this book fully convinced I was reading a nonfiction book about Alan Turing from the point of view of the policeman who found his body. Good job, David Lagercrantz! You totally fooled me! The book in question is Fall of Man in Wilmslow and it's the fictionalized story of Alan Turing's suicide and his contribution to the war effort and to numerous academic disciplines. Over the last year or more, I've been pretty much obsessed with all things A.I. and as a result I've learned a great deal about Alan Turing (and I've talked about him a few times here if you remember) who is considered the father of the modern computer AND Artificial Intelligence. What a guy! As a result, I'm pretty familiar with the biographical points of his life and his death. That's partially why I thought this was a work of nonfiction because all of those facts were laid out...which is the perfect way to build a fantastic piece of historical fiction. Lagercrantz used just enough of the truth to weave a convincing story about what might have happened had the policeman who found him been somewhat like Turing himself. Detective Constable Leonard Corell is the first officer on the scene and at first he is disgusted by not only the act of suicide itself but the man who committed it. This disgust turns into a kind of rage when he discovers that Turing was convicted of homosexuality. Even his initial aversion doesn't tamp down his horror at the punishment meted out by the government however. (He was chemically castrated which many believe was the main reason he chose to end his life as it led to severe depression.) Corell is an odd character. He flip flops between being overconfident in his abilities to allowing himself to be railroaded by his peers and bosses. He's also constantly daydreaming which I found tiring by the end of the novel. Speaking of the end of the novel, I didn't like it. It felt like the book was building and building and then the end was such a letdown. I can't say more about it without giving away huge spoilers but let's just say it was closely tied into Corell's daydreams. If you're completely unfamiliar with Turing and his work then this is an interesting way to get clued in because as I said much of the story is completely factual. Excepting the end, I really did enjoy this book. Lagercrantz is an excellent storyteller and he fooled me into thinking this was entirely plausible. 8/10 because that ending bummed me out.

Photo source: abebooks.com

Honestly, I spent the entirety of this book fully convinced I was reading a nonfiction book about Alan Turing from the point of view of the policeman who found his body. Good job, David Lagercrantz! You totally fooled me! The book in question is Fall of Man in Wilmslow and it's the fictionalized story of Alan Turing's suicide and his contribution to the war effort and to numerous academic disciplines. Over the last year or more, I've been pretty much obsessed with all things A.I. and as a result I've learned a great deal about Alan Turing (and I've talked about him a few times here if you remember) who is considered the father of the modern computer AND Artificial Intelligence. What a guy! As a result, I'm pretty familiar with the biographical points of his life and his death. That's partially why I thought this was a work of nonfiction because all of those facts were laid out...which is the perfect way to build a fantastic piece of historical fiction. Lagercrantz used just enough of the truth to weave a convincing story about what might have happened had the policeman who found him been somewhat like Turing himself. Detective Constable Leonard Corell is the first officer on the scene and at first he is disgusted by not only the act of suicide itself but the man who committed it. This disgust turns into a kind of rage when he discovers that Turing was convicted of homosexuality. Even his initial aversion doesn't tamp down his horror at the punishment meted out by the government however. (He was chemically castrated which many believe was the main reason he chose to end his life as it led to severe depression.) Corell is an odd character. He flip flops between being overconfident in his abilities to allowing himself to be railroaded by his peers and bosses. He's also constantly daydreaming which I found tiring by the end of the novel. Speaking of the end of the novel, I didn't like it. It felt like the book was building and building and then the end was such a letdown. I can't say more about it without giving away huge spoilers but let's just say it was closely tied into Corell's daydreams. If you're completely unfamiliar with Turing and his work then this is an interesting way to get clued in because as I said much of the story is completely factual. Excepting the end, I really did enjoy this book. Lagercrantz is an excellent storyteller and he fooled me into thinking this was entirely plausible. 8/10 because that ending bummed me out.

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A good general biography of Alan Turing. Not going into many details, as this wouldn't be really convenient in graphic novel form anyway, but comprehensive enough to encompass the most important aspects of his work.

Sometimes this comics reminded me of “Breaking the Code”—I guess that was because of the different narrators, and possibly also the interrogator's questions hinting at Turing's homosexuality, although the focus was less on that here than it was in the play. Interestingly, those “hints” were most often dismissed by the people telling about Turing's life: his mother (apparently naively) understanding this was about girls, Clarke and others basically shrugging it off (“he wasn't the only one, and we didn't care anyway because we were in Bletchley Park to work, not to worry about such things”), a colleague wondering why the hell Alan even broached the subject yet being his friend and working with him pretty fine all the same, etc. This aspect of Turing's life is always difficult to deal with, IMHO: it shouldn't matter so much, what matters is hius work, but since it was illegal in the UK at the time, it's just not something one could overlook, as it impacted his life nonetheless.

Noteworthy is also how his work in Bletchley Park had to be downplayed, and how it had been the same for all the cryptanalystes, scientists, “wrens” and other people involved. Since it was classified information, none were allowed to tell, even after World War II was over, what kind of work exactly they had done. Some were finally allowed to reveal it decades later, after the classified bit was lifted, while others died without never having opened their mouths about it. I felt this was important, as Turing may have been more respected by his peers if he had been able to list his achievements in that regard (and the trial seems to reflect that, with those against him looking at him in belittling ways, as if he had just done “some work” and not been part of something bigger, something much more important—as if all that defined him was that “gross misconduct with another man”, and the rest wasn't worth being mentioned).

The format is a bit strange, in that, as mentioned above, the story follows Alan's voice as well as that of another person (his mother, his friends...) and an interrogator. It is disconcerting at first, however the use of different colours (Alan's voice in yellow, his mother's in pink, for instance) allows to differenciate between them. Obviously enough, this format follows that of the Imitation Game itself, where a man A has to convince an interrogator that he's not a man, while a woman B has to convince the same interrogator A is lying and she's telling the truth. (I say obviously, because I just can't see how such a narrative set of voices would've been chosen at random.)

The drawing style, unfortunatey, didn't do much for me, and often detracted from what the book was showing, and from some of the ways it went about exploring what may have been Turing's thoughts: wandering in his own mind, following a trail of paper leading to other great minds like Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, all the while with Turing's colleagues and friends trying to follow him, follow the trail, but clearly never managing to really catch up... I found it to be an interesting representation of what may otherwise have been tedious. (There's some science in there, too, and it can easily become confusing to someone who's not overly familiat with concepts behind Turing's works.)

Drawing style not withstanding, this was a pretty interesting book, and a good introduction to Turing's life. There are plenty of references at the end for those who'd like to read more (including Hodges's “Alan Turing: The Enigma”). 4/5 stars.

This is a tough book for me to review, because at least 50% of it went in one ear and out the other. Don't get me wrong, it was interesting, it's just that I couldn't follow a lot of it.

Part of the problem was the diagrams. I'm pretty sure there were a lot of them, especially in the first half of the book, and the poor narrator had to read all of it out loud. I have a feeling that, even if I weren't a more visual learner, I still would have had trouble following the various long series of letters or numbers used to demonstrate Turing's ideas.

The other problem was that the first half of the book didn't seem to have a solid organizational structure. The author would discuss people or ideas that didn't seem to have much connection to Turing, then move onto another subject, and then another. It was interesting stuff, but I had trouble seeing how it all connected.

Thankfully, the latter half was much less confusing. I enjoyed the sections on Turing's cryptography work during World War II, and I loved the sections near the end on Turing's ideas about machine learning and artificial intelligence. While I didn't always agree with his theories about how a machine might best be taught, which were based on old-fashioned child rearing techniques (and which I recognize would not necessarily have been considered old-fashioned from his perspective), I found his way of thinking about machines to be fascinating.

He questioned the prevailing tendency to take human superiority for granted. Others repeatedly stated that machines could never be equal to or more superior than humans for various reasons: they would never enjoy the taste of strawberries and cream, never write a sonnet, never listen to a piece of music and feel moved, and never fall in love or cause someone else to fall in love with them. Turing refuted many of these statements and questioned the importance of others. For example, someone probably could create a machine that could enjoy the taste of strawberries and cream, but why would anyone want to do that? The bit about sonnets inspired one of my favorite quotes: “A sonnet written by a machine will be better appreciated by a machine.” To his mind, machines would have a way of viewing and appreciating the world that would likely be different from, rather than inferior to, the way humans would view and appreciate it.

He was also adamant that, when judging machines' intelligence and ability to think, they not be held to higher standards than humans. Humans require training and education before they can properly perform new tasks, and it's accepted that humans will occasionally make mistakes. Why shouldn't machines be given a similar amount of leeway?

I did think that Turing's “imitation game,” which has come to be called the Turing test, contradicted some of his other ideas, since it was based on a machine's ability to convince a human interrogator that it was human. Rather than accepting the idea that a machine's thought processes and ability to appreciate the world would probably be different from a human's, the Turing test brings us back to the idea of human superiority – a machine could only be said to “think” if it could imitate a human being enough to be mistaken for one.

I had thought this book would contain more biographical information than it did, but it was really more about Turing's ideas. The one aspect of Turing's personal life that the author did frequently write about was his homosexuality. The book briefly mentioned that he might not have been permitted to do cryptanalysis work at Bletchley Park if the government had known he was gay, and I was a little amazed that they didn't know, since he seemed to be fairly open about it. I have a feeling that the only reason he kept out of trouble for so long was because he was quiet, shy, and socially awkward. Although I knew from the start of the book that things wouldn't end well for Turing, the final section of the book, on his ill-fated relationship with Arnold Murray, his conviction for gross indecency, the estrogen injections that he was given to “cure” him of his homosexuality, and his eventual suicide (the author also briefly brings up the possibility that Turing was assassinated), was heartbreaking.

And here I thought this was going to be a short review. Anyway, the first half of this book was a mess and would probably have been better in paper or e-book form. The second half of the book was much better and made up for the first half somewhat. According to several reviews, Andrew Hodges' Alan Turing: The Enigma is overall a much better book, so I may see about reading it (or, more likely, listening to it) at some point in the future.

Additional Comments:

I enjoyed Paul Michael Garcia's narration, but the audio quality was very uneven, sometimes noticeably changing in the middle of a sentence.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)