Imitation Game filmmakers accused of romanticising the relationship between Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley's characters by Alan Turing's niece Inagh Payne Susanna Lazarus 3:27 PM, 19 November 2013 Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley's romance in forthcoming Alan Turing biopic The Imitation Game has been labelled inaccurate by Turing's niece. Cumberbatch plays the wartime codebreaker and computer scientist opposite Knightley as parson's daughter Joan Clarke. The pair were briefly engaged during their time working at Bletchley Park. But while Knightley is known for her glamorous film star looks, Turing's niece, Inagh Payne, has recalled his one-time fiancé as "rather plain." Payne goes on to describe a woman who was "very nice, bright and a good friend to Alan" and says she reacted well when Turing revealed that he was gay. "When he told her about how he was she accepted it, didn't make a scene or anything like that," Payne told The Mail on Sunday. But when it came to the film's portrayal of the pair's relationship, Payne had some grievances to air, stating, "I think they might be trying to romanticise it.

It makes me a bit mad. You want the film to show it as it was, not a lot of nonsense." Turing was a computer science pioneer and, following his wartime codebreaking work, was responsible for designing the early computer ACE. In 1952 he was prosecuted for his homosexuality, convicted of gross indecency and underwent "chemical castration" – a female hormone treatment – in order to avoid imprisonment. He committed suicide two years later, aged 41, and was issued a posthumous public apology in 2012 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The Imitation Game – which stars Cumberbatch and Knightley alongside Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear and Allen Leech – concluded filming in England last week and is set for release in 2014, sixty years after Turing's untimely death.

'That chap' Benedict Cumberbatch is a 'superb' Alan Turing, former Bletchley Park girl says - Telegraph Film 'That chap' Benedict Cumberbatch is a 'superb' Alan Turing, former Bletchley Park girl says Baroness Trumpington, now a Conservative peer, says 'that chap' is 'fantastic' as the code breaker in the new film of Alan Turing's life - but she doesn't seem to know who he is Keira Knightley, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Allen Leech star in The Imitation Game The Imitation Game True Story - The Real Alan Turing, Joan Clarke Birthplace: London, England, UK Death: April 5, 2009, Radford, Virginia, USA (natural causes) I've now got myself into the kind of trouble that I have always considered to be quite a possibility for me, though I have usually rated it at about 10 to 1 against. I shall shortly be pleading guilty to a charge of sexual offenses with a young man. The story of how it all came to be found out is a long and fascinating one... but I haven't got time to tell you now.

No doubt I shall emerge from it all a different man, but quite who I've not found out. -Alan Turing, 1952, Letter to Friend and Colleague Norman Routledge Questioning the Story: Is Detective Robert Nock based on a real person? No. "Detective Nock is a fake name - he was named after my old roommate," says screenwriter Graham Moore. "He gives us another perspective ... we can see how a normal person, not a bad person, could end up doing this horrible thing to Alan. We didn't want to create this story of Alan being a sad character that bad things happened to, so we decided to show his final years through the perspective of this fictional detective. ... Nock is not a bad person, not an evil person. The terrible thing that happened to Turing was not his fault and was deeply unfair and the injustice of that is something we all have to reckon with." Robert Nock is the only character in the movie with a fake name. -Tumblr (imitationgamemovie) Did the police uncover Turing's homosexuality while investigating him for being a possible Soviet spy? No. Here The Imitation Game deviates significantly from the true story.

The real Alan Turing was not investigated for being a possible Soviet spy. Turing himself had reported a petty theft to the police, not a neighbor who heard noises. He changed the details of his story to cover up a relationship he was having with the suspected culprit, 19-year-old Arnold Murray. Instead of first suspecting Turing of espionage like in the movie, the police immediately honed in on Turing for violating the law of gross indecency due to his homosexual relationship with Murray. -The Guardian Genealogists have discovered that the real Alan Turing (left) and his onscreen counterpart, actor Benedict Cumberbatch (right), are related. They are 17th cousins dating back to John Beaufort, the first Earl of Somerset, who was born in approximately 1373. -Ancestry.com Was Alan Turing really put on trial for being gay? Yes. The Imitation Game true story confirms that on March 31, 1952, British authorities put Alan Turing on trial for indecency because he had homosexual relations with a 19-year-old man named Arnold Murray, twenty years his junior.

Homosexuality was a crime in Great Britain in the early 1950s, falling under gross indecency in Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. To avoid jail time for his indecency conviction, Turing underwent chemical castration in the form of a year's worth of estrogen (stilboestrol) injections designed to reduce his libido. In addition to rendering him impotent, another side effect of the hormone therapy was that Turing developed gynaecomastia, or an enlarged chest (breasts). On June 7, 1954, approximately a year after his hormone treatments ended, Turing killed himself by eating an apple that he had likely injected with cyanide. We say "likely" because the apple was never tested for cyanide, though it was speculated that this was the delivery method. -Alan Turing: The Enigma The general public became familiar with the name Alan Turing after learning of his indecency conviction and suicide. It would be years before they learned that he was also largely responsible for outsmarting the Nazis. -Tumblr (imitationgamemovie) Was Alan Turing's codebreaking machine really named Christopher? No.

The Imitation Game true story reveals that the name of the real codebreaking machine was less personal. Unlike the movie, it was not named Christopher after Turing's late friend and first love, teenage companion Christopher Morcom (Morcom was a real teenage friend who Alan met at Sherborne School). Instead, Turing's machine was called the Bombe, named after an earlier Polish version of the codebreaking machine. Like in the movie, Turing created a much improved version of the Polish machine. The U.S. eventually produced its own equivalents, but they were engineered differently than the British Bombe created by Alan Turing and his team. -Empire Magazine Actor Jack Bannon (left) portrays Alan Turing's friend Christopher Morcom (right), who died suddenly in 1930. Did Alan's friend Christopher really die suddenly of bovine tuberculosis? Yes. The real Alan Turing met Christopher Morcom at Sherborne School, the boys' school in Dorset, England, which Alan attended as a teenager. The two became good friends, sharing an interest in math and chemistry (not codes and ciphers). Morcom, who was a year older, did die suddenly of bovine tuberculosis, which he had contracted as a small boy from drinking infected cows' milk.

However, the headmaster did not coldly tell Turing of Morcom's February 13, 1930 death after Morcom had already passed away. In real life, 'Ben' Davis, the junior housemaster, had sent Turing a note earlier that day and told him to prepare for the worst. Turing also did not pretend that he had barely known Morcom. In real life, Turing's friends and family knew that he was devastated, and he even became close to Morcom's family after his passing. -Alan Turing: The Enigma Buy an Alan Turing T-Shirt Was Alan's attraction to Christopher a mutual attraction? Not likely. Though The Imitation Game movie implies that Christopher is also attracted to Alan, Andrew Hodges' biography indicates otherwise.

Alan wrote of making it a point to sit next to Christopher in every class, stating that Christopher "made some of the remarks I was afraid of (I know better now) about the coincidence but seemed to welcome me in a passive way." Hodges again talks of Christopher's passivity toward Alan, stating that he gradually took Alan seriously, but always with "considerable reserve." In his writings, Alan indicates that Christopher was aware of his feelings, "Chris knew I think so well how I liked him, but hated me shewing it," indicating that while Chris liked the attention, Alan's affection went unrequited. -Alan Turing: The Enigma Did Turing come up with the design for the codebreaking machine on his own? No. Unlike the movie, Alan Turing didn't come up with the design for the improved Bombe machine on his own. Gordon Welchman, a mathematician who is not mentioned in the film, collaborated with Turing. -Alan Turing: The Enigma Did Alan Turing's codebreaking machine look like the one in the movie? For the most part, yes. However, the real codebreaking machine, the Bombe, was housed in a Bakelite box.

Production designer Maria Djurkovic and her team researched the working replica that is on display at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England. "Our version of the machine had to look convincing," says Djurkovic. She and director Morten Tyldum decided to reveal the machine's inner workings. They also added more red cables to give the audience the feeling that blood was pumping through its veins. -Tumblr (imitationgamemovie) Alan Turing's real Bombe machine (top) at Bletchley Park in 1943. The machine's name was changed to Christopher for the movie (bottom) and more red cables were added to mimic veins pumping blood through the machine. Is there a secret URL hidden in an Imitation Game teaser trailer? Yes. The secret URL is in the form of an IP address and is hidden in the teaser trailer titled " Are You Paying Attention ". The URL can be spotted at the trailer's 4-second mark when actor Benedict Cumberbatch asks, "Are you paying attention?" Look for the IP 146.148.62.204 .

The link challenges you to complete a crossword puzzle based on the one that the real Alan Turing published in the London Daily Telegraph in 1942 in an effort to recruit more codebreakers for his team. Turing invited anyone who could complete the crossword puzzle in 12 minutes or less to apply for a job. In the movie, one of these individuals is Joane Clarke (Keira Knightley), who ends up being the only female applicant in a room full of men. Like Alan Turing's challenge, you are given a specific amount of time to complete the crossword puzzle found through the URL. Do you have what it takes to be a Turing codebreaker? Was Joan Clarke really hired at Bletchley Park after solving a crossword puzzle in the newspaper? No. The real Joan Clarke's introduction to Turing's team at Bletchley Park was less exciting than Keira Knightley's character's experience in the movie. In real life, Joan Clarke was already employed at Bletchley Park performing clerical duties. She had been recruited by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS).

A former math wiz at Cambridge, her mathematical talents were again noticed at Bletchley, and she was promoted to work with the group in Hut 8, led by Alan Turing. Andrew Hodges' biography also states that Joan Clarke had actually already met Alan Turing previously at Cambridge. Did the Soviet spy, John Cairncross, really work with Alan Turing? No. Our research into The Imitation Game true story exposed the fact that although John Cairncross did work at Bletchley Park and admitted to being a Soviet spy in 1951, he did not work as part of Alan Turing's group. "Their relationship is invented," says author Andrew Hodges. It is unlikely that they ever even had contact with one another, since communication between sections at Bletchley was very limited. In the movie, after Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) discovers that John Cairncross (Allen Leech) is a Soviet spy, Cairncross blackmails Turing by threatening to reveal his sexuality. -The Sunday Times As shown in the movie, Alan Turing (right) was a capable long-distance runner and often used running as a way to get the stress of his job as a codebreaker out of his mind.

Was Alan Turing really engaged to Joan Clarke? Yes. In the movie, we see Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) ask Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) to marry him as a way to keep her at Bletchley Park, since her parents want her to move on with her life and find a husband. Though Turing does tell Joan about his attraction to men, in the film he only breaks off the engagement after John Cairncross, the Soviet spy, threatens to reveal that Turing is gay, which could in turn negatively affect Joan. In real life, Alan Turing's marriage proposal in the spring of 1941 wasn't a ploy to keep Joan at Bletchley Park. He also didn't break off the engagement as the result of pressure from a Soviet spy. The real Joan Clarke says that the two were interested in one another, despite their relationship lacking a certain physical element. Turing even arranged their shifts so they could work together. They went on dates to the cinema and other places, and despite there not being much physical contact, they did kiss. Turing introduced Joan to his family.

Author Andrew Hodges states in his Turing biography that "the idea that marriage should include a mutual sexual satisfaction was still a modern one, which had not yet replaced the older idea of marriage as a social duty." During an interview found in the 1992 BBC Horizon episode " The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Turing ," Joan says that Alan told her about his "homosexual tendency" the day after he proposed. "Naturally, that worried me a bit," admits Joan, "because I did know that was something which was almost certainly permanent, but we carried on." A fellow member of Turing's team called their relationship "quite delightful" and said that they were "very sweet together." Though there was talk of the future, including children, their engagement did not survive past the summer of 1941. Turing used an Oscar Wilde poem to break things off. -BBC Horizon Gay and Lesbian news outlets criticized an early draft of The Imitation Game script, accusing the filmmakers of "straight-washing" the story.

Black Bear Pictures rejected the allegations, issuing a statement that said, "There is not - and never has been - a version of our script where Alan Turing is anything other than homosexual." Did Turing's team only pass along a percentage of the decoded messages? Yes, but the movie's account of how the group decided which decoded messages to pass along to British forces is fictional. In the film, Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his team crack Enigma but hold off on telling their superiors for fear that the Germans will become suspicious and change the code. After they decide against passing along intercepted information about an impending attack on a British convoy, Turing goes to Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) and together they come up with a system for deciding which cracked messages should be passed along to the British Army, Navy and RAF. In reality, it was Menzies duty to come up with a method for deciding what percentage of gathered intelligence should be passed along. -The Telegraph Each letter pressed on the German Enigma machine (pictured above in the movie) caused a corresponding ciphertext letter to light up above the keyboard.

Several rotors (usually 3 or 4) could be adjusted to reset the encryption, a process that would determine which letter corresponded to which ciphertext letter. Was Alan Turing accused of treason and cowardice for not revealing Soviet spy John Cairncross? No. As indicated above, the relationship between Alan Turing and John Cairncross was invented by the filmmakers. During our investigation into The Imitation Game true story, we learned that Turing and Cairncross did not work in the same section at Bletchley Park, and given that the groups at Bletchley were somewhat isolated from one another, it is highly unlikely that these two men ever met in real life, an idea that Turing biographer Andrew Hodges called "ludicrous." This fictional addition to the film, which finds Turing withholding the fact that Cairncross was a Soviet spy, has generated a significant amount of controversy and criticism, namely in that it places accusations of treason upon Turing. -The Guardian Did Joan Clarke visit Alan Turing after the war? No. Andrew Hodges' biography states that Alan wrote to Joan and told her that he had been found out, but there is no mention of Joan coming to visit Alan.

At the time of his letter, Joan was engaged to be married, as Keira Knightley's character is when she visits Alan (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the movie. Is there a reason why we don't see Alan Turing's suicide in the film? On June 7, 1954, roughly a year after he underwent "chemical castration" (estrogen injections) as a way of avoiding prison time for his indecency conviction, Alan Turning ingested an apple that he had likely laced with cyanide (it is speculated that the half-eaten apple was the delivery method, though it was never tested). Biographer Andrew Hodges suggested that he was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 Walt Disney movie Snow White, his favorite fairy tale. The Imitation Game director Morten Tyldum did film the suicide scene, but it did not make the final cut of the film. In real life, Turing's housekeeper found him dead in his bed, with the half-eaten apple next to him on his bedside table (BBC News). "We never wanted to see him commit suicide on screen," says Graham Moore, the film's screenwriter.

"This film was about paying attention to Alan Turing's tremendous life and his amazing accomplishments. It felt to us more ethical and more responsible to focus on his life and his accomplishments than the nitty-gritty of his suicide." -Tumblr (imitationgamemovie) Did Alan Turing take his own life by re-enacting a scene from the film Snow White, his favorite fairy tale? Is it possible that Alan Turing's death was not a suicide? Though the investigation and the coroner's verdict ruled the death a suicide, some believe that the death was caused by the accidental inhalation of cyanide fumes from a device used for electroplating spoons with gold. Turing's mother, Ethel, also believed his death was accidental (Alan Turing: The Enigma). "His mother wrote to me," says the real Joan Clarke, "and she said that although it was a verdict of suicide, she believed it an accident, and of course, his method was chosen to make it possible for some at least to believe that." -BBC Horizon Was the Apple company logo inspired by the apple associated with poisoning Alan Turing? No. This is just an urban legend. Apple has denied any correlation.

-Empire Magazine Was The Imitation Game movie filmed at the real Bletchley Park? The only scenes that were actually shot at the real Bletchley Park (located in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England) took place at the bar. This includes Turing's eureka moment, the engagement party scene, and his confession to John Cairncross about being gay. Other parts of the movie were filmed at Alan Turing's childhood school, where his picture is still on the wall (Tumblr - imitationgamemovie). Members of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) first visited Bletchley Park in 1938 and returned in 1939 to set up their operation. The park has since been converted into a museum, which opened its doors to the public in 1993 (BletchleyPark.org.uk). Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England was the main site of the United Kingdom's Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). Bletchley Park's centerpiece is the mansion pictured above.

Joan Clarke Interview, Turing Biography & Related Videos Expand your knowledge of The Imitation Game true story by watching a Joan Clarke interview where she talks about her engagement to Alan Turing and his homosexuality. Then watch a short Turing biography that includes an explanation of the Nazi Enigma machine and Turing's Bombe machine. Finally, look for the secret web link in one of The Imitation Game teaser trailers. Film about WW2 codebreaker Alan Turing is attacked by biographer for exaggerating love affair with woman because he was gay and says Keira Knightley is 'too glamorous' | Daily Mail Online Film about WW2 codebreaker Alan Turing is attacked by biographer for exaggerating love affair with woman because he was gay and says Keira Knightley is 'too glamorous' Turing played a key role in breaking the German Enigma code during WWII He is credited with saving thousands of lives during the conflict An American funded film is soon to be filmed about the gay codebreaker Will star Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing and Keira Knightley as girlfriend But it has been slated by his autobiographer, who has called it ludicrous L.V. Anderson L.V. Anderson is a Slate associate editor. Just how inaccurate are those inaccuracies?

I read the masterful biography that the screenplay is based on, Andrew Hodges’ Alan Turing: The Enigma , to find out. I discovered that The Imitation Game takes major liberties with its source material, injecting conflict where none existed, inventing entirely fictional characters, rearranging the chronology of events, and misrepresenting the very nature of Turing’s work at Bletchley Park. At the same time, the film might paint Turing as being more unlovable than he actually was. For details on the film’s flights of fancy, read on. (There will, naturally, be spoilers.) Advertisement Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) Wikimedia Commons / © 2014 - The Weinstein Company The Alan Turing played by Benedict Cumberbatch is brusque, humorless, and brilliant. In an early scene where he is interviewed by Commander Denniston (Charles Dance), we learn that he made exceptional achievements in mathematics at a young age. This is a reflection of reality: Turing was elected as a fellow at Cambridge at the age of 22, and he published his most influential paper, “ On Computable Numbers ,” at 24.

Other aspects of Cumberbatch’s characterization are true to life, as well: Turing was fairly indifferent to politics, both in the interpersonal sense and in the civic sense. He ran marathons. He was also gay, and even more openly than the film implies. Hodges’ biography is filled with instances in which Turing boldly made advances toward other men—mostly without success. Turing also told his friends and colleagues about his homosexuality. However, the central conceit of The Imitation Game—that Turing singlehandedly invented and physically built the machine that broke the Germans’ Enigma code—is simply untrue. A predecessor of the “Bombe”—the name given to the large, ticking machine that used rotors to test different letter combinations—was invented by Polish cryptanalysts before Turing even began working as a cryptologist for the British government.* Turing’s great innovation was to design a new machine that broke the Enigma code faster by looking for likely letter combinations and ruling out combinations that were unlikely to yield results. Turing didn’t develop the new, improved machine by dint of his own singular genius—the mathematician Gordon Welchman, who is not even mentioned in the film, collaborated with Turing on the design.

Advertisement Leaving aside Turing’s codebreaking achievements, The Imitation Game also somewhat alters Turing’s personality. The film strongly implies that Alan is somewhere on the autism spectrum: Cumberbatch’s character doesn’t understand jokes, takes common expressions literally, and seems indifferent to the suffering and annoyance he causes in others. This characterization is rooted in Hodge’s biography but is also largely exaggerated: Hodges never suggests that Turing was autistic, and though he refers to Turing’s tendency to take contracts and other bureaucratic red tape literally, he also describes Turing as a man with a keen sense of humor and close friends. To be sure, Hodges paints Turing as shy, eccentric, and impatient with irrationality, but Cumberbatch’s narcissistic, detached Alan has more in common with the actor’s title character in Sherlock than with the Turing of Hodges’ biography. One of Turing’s colleagues at Bletchley Park later recalled him as “a very easily approachable man” and said “we were very very fond of him”; none of this is reflected in the film. In addition to the more significant creative liberties that the movie takes, there are small fictions surrounding his character in the movie.

Although, in the movie, Alan tells Denniston that he doesn’t know German, Turing did in fact study German and travel to Germany before and after the war. Turing did not, as far as we know, have a compulsion to separate his peas and carrots. (In fact, given his generally unkempt appearance, it’s highly unlikely he gave attention to such details.) And whether or not Turing liked sandwiches—a key plot point in The Imitation Game—goes unmentioned in Hodges’ biography. Christopher Morcom (Jack Bannon) In flashbacks to 1928 in The Imitation Game, we learn that Alan’s first love was a classmate at boarding school named Christopher. Christopher rescues Alan after he’s nailed under the floorboards by bullies, teaches Alan to communicate via codes and ciphers, flirts with Alan, and then suddenly dies of bovine tuberculosis. Advertisement Although many of the details are invented for the movie, the gist of this storyline is true: Turing really did befriend and develop romantic feelings for a boy named Christopher Morcom at Sherborne School, the boys’ school in Dorset that he attended as a teenager.

(He also did get trapped under the floorboards by other boys, according to Alan Turing: The Enigma, but this occurred before he met Morcom.) Morcom died from bovine tuberculosis in 1930, shortly after he’d been accepted to Cambridge and three years after Turing had first met him. In the movie, it’s implied that Christopher shares Alan’s attraction, but it seems likely that Turing’s affection for Morcom was unrequited—Turing later wrote, “Chris knew I think so well how I liked him, but hated me shewing it.” Several other details of their relationship are different in the movie than in Alan Turing: The Enigma. Although in the movie Christopher is taller than young Alan (Alex Lawther), in reality Turing had a growth spurt at 15, while Morcom was “surprisingly small for his form.” (Morcom was one year ahead of Turing in school.) Turing and Morcom bonded over math and chemistry, not ciphers; Turing began exploring ciphers with another friend at Sherborne after Morcom had died. The biggest departure from reality in the film is the scene where the headmaster informs Alan of Christopher’s death, and Alan denies having known Christopher very well.

In real life, Turing was openly devastated by Morcom’s death, and he subsequently developed a relationship with Morcom’s family, going on vacations with them and maintaining a correspondence with Morcom’s mother for years after he’d left Sherborne. Additionally, Turing did not call any of the early computers he worked on “Christopher”—that is a dramatic flourish invented by screenwriter Graham Moore. Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) Screenshot © 2014 - The Weinstein Company Advertisement In The Imitation Game, Commander Denniston is a rigid naval officer who resents Alan’s indifference to the military hierarchy and attempts to fire him when his decryption machine fails to deliver fast results. This characterization is mostly fictional, and Denniston’s family has taken issue with the film’s negative portrayal of him . The real-life Alastair Denniston, who spent most of his career as the director of the Government Code and Cypher School, was eager to expand his staff to help break the Germans’ Enigma code in the late 1930s.

He recruited Turing, on the basis of his work at Cambridge and his writing on hypothetical computation machines, in 1938, and he hired Turing to work full time at Bletchley Park when Britain entered World War II in September 1939. There’s no record of a contentious interview between Turing and Denniston, and Denniston never tried to fire Turing from the Government Code and Cypher School—rather, given his innovations, Turing was a star of Bletchley Park. Even if most of the details of the conflict between Commander Denniston and Alan are made up, they do stand in for a real-life power struggle between the military brass and the cryptologists. Turing’s colleagues there recalled that Turing “was always impatient of pompousness or officialdom of any kind,” which made him ill-suited for work in a military context, and Hodges writes that he “had little time for Denniston.” One of the most memorable clashes between Commander Denniston and Alan in the movie occurs when Alan goes over Denniston’s head to write a letter to Winston Churchill, who immediately puts Alan in charge of the Enigma-breaking operation and grants him the 100,000 pounds he needs to build his machine.

This never happened, but Alan and three colleagues at Bletchley Park—including Hugh Alexander—did write a letter to Churchill requesting more staff and resources in 1941, and Churchill quickly granted them their requests. Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode) Wikimedia Commons / © 2014 - The Weinstein Company In The Imitation Game, Hugh Alexander is a suave ladykiller who spends much of the film battling with Alan for control of the codebreaking operations; Hugh eventually recognizes Alan’s genius and falls in line behind him. Hugh Alexander—who went professionally by Conel Hugh O’Donel Alexander or C.H.O’D. Alexander—was a real person, but the film’s Hugh character seems intended to serve as a contrast to Alan’s antisocial personality. Advertisement The film is faithful to the basic facts: Alexander was a chess champion, and he was much better at managing people than Turing was. However, Alexander was not initially assigned to be Turing’s superior at Bletchley Park. Alexander began working there several months after Turing arrived, and the two didn’t begin working together for another year or so, when Alexander was transferred to Turing’s team to work on breaking Germany’s naval Enigma code.

Hodges writes, “Hugh Alexander soon proved the all-round organiser and diplomat that Alan could never be.” Alexander eventually took over naval Enigma decryption after Turing began pursuing a speech decryption project, but by all accounts, their relationship was friendly and mutually respectful. In fact, when Turing was tried for indecency in 1952, Alexander served as a character witness for the defense. Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) © 2014 - The Weinstein Company Keira Knightley’s character in The Imitation Game is a brilliant, spunky young mathematician whom Alan agrees to marry to get her conservative parents off her back. As with other storylines, the skeleton of this narrative is true, even if the details are not. Clarke was recruited to Bletchley Park by her former academic supervisor (and Turing’s partner in improving the Bombe) Gordon Welchman; she didn’t win the role by excelling in a crossword competition. (Bletchley recruiters did use crosswords to find talented codebreakers, but neither Turing nor Clarke was involved in this effort.) And Turing proposed to Clarke not to help her escape from overbearing parents, but because they liked each other.

He “told her that he was glad he could talk to her ‘as to a man,’ ” writes Hodges, and they shared an interest in chess and botany. She even accepted Turing’s homosexuality; their engagement continued after he confessed his attraction to men. But after some months, Turing ended the engagement. “It was neither a happy nor an easy decision,” writes Hodges, but it wasn’t the ultimately violent confrontation depicted in The Imitation Game, either. “There had been several times when he had come out with ‘I do love you.’ Lack of love was not Alan’s problem.” Turing and Clarke kept in touch after their engagement ended, and Turing even tried to rekindle their relationship after a couple of years, but Clarke rebuffed him. Turing also wrote a letter to Clarke in 1952 to inform her of his impending trial for indecency, but the final scene of The Imitation Game, in which Joan visits Alan during his probation, is invented. Advertisement The Imitation Game: who were the real Bletchley Park codebreakers? Film The Imitation Game: who were the real Bletchley Park codebreakers?

The Illustration Game: Alan Turing depicted decoding Nazi messages with the help of his Bletchley Park team Credit: Mark Thomas/Central Illustration Agency Nigel Farndale 31 July 2016 • 11:14am There are secrets and there are secrets. The work done during the Second World War at Bletchley Park , a Victorian mansion in Buckinghamshire, was so secret, the people who worked there didn't talk about it even to their parents, let alone their husbands and wives. Some took the secret with them to their graves. No wonder Winston Churchill called the place his "goose that laid the golden egg and never cackled". The "golden egg" was nothing less than the ability to decode the secrets of the German war machine. Station X, as it was known, was so efficient it could read coded messages from German generals on the battlefield before they were even seen by Hitler in Berlin. And the Germans never suspected a thing – which was not surprising, given that they had invented the most complicated encoding machine the world had ever seen.

Enigma , as it was called, resembled a large typewriter with lights and could, letter-by-letter, turn a message into unintelligible gibberish that could be decoded only by using another Enigma machine. Thanks to a series of lettered rotors, which were reset each day, Enigma machines could be configured in 150million million million different ways. Such was the scale of this complexity, the Germans thought it completely safe. Watch | The Imitation Game film full traiiler 02:25 As the war progressed, Station X became a hidden city of 10,000 people working in hastily constructed "huts". Many of the codebreakers were tweedy, pipe-smoking Cambridge mathematicians, both dons and recent graduates, but some were recruited because of their linguistic skills, knowledge of hieroglyphics, or brilliance at chess. All were expected to be able to solve the Telegraph crossword in less than six minutes. Many were eccentric. One boffin would pace around the lake drinking coffee as he pondered, and when he had finished his cup he would look at it in surprise, as if unsure how it had got into his hand.

He would then toss it over his shoulder in to the lake. At the end of the war, Churchill ordered that all records of the place be destroyed in a huge bonfire. Had one former employee not written a book in 1974 about his work there, we might have remained in the dark about Bletchley to this day. As it was, the world was astonished. Indignant too, because Alan Turing, the genius who did most to crack the German Enigma codes and shorten the war by at least two years, was treated appallingly after the war, on account of his homosexuality . He was prosecuted for "gross indecency" in 1952 and given hormone treatment – "chemical castration" – which led to his suicide two years later. He was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. The Bletchley story is told in new film The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing Morten Tyldum's film , The Imitation Game , celebrates his work at Bletchley Park.

As played by Benedict Cumberbatch (in what is being tipped as an Oscar-winning performance), Turing is revealed as an insensitive narcissist who found eye contact difficult, but who was very much the right man at the right time. Apart from saving millions of lives, he also had a hand in the invention of the world's first programmable computer at Bletchley, a giant machine called Colossus that enabled him to crack codes quickly, by a process of elimination. Everyone has heard of Turing now, and rightly so, but, as this film reminds us, he was part of an extraordinary team, some brilliant, others unprofessional, one treacherous. So who were they? Well, the second most important person at Bletchley was Hugh Alexander. Hugh Alexander (played by Matthew Goode) - British chess champion Hugh Alexander; Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander in The Imitation Game Like many of the codebreakers, he had a first in mathematics from Cambridge, but he found himself in Hut 6 in 1940 thanks to his brilliance at chess. Twice British chess champion, and an International Master, he made important contributions to two classic chess strategies: "the Dutch defence" and the "Petroff defence".

Had he been allowed to compete in the Soviet Union during the Cold War – the authorities here thought the contents of his brain too valuable to allow him to go anywhere near there - he may even have become a world champion. He was known in print at Bletchley as C.H.O'D – his full name was Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander – which sounds like a cryptic crossword clue. Perhaps not quite as dashing as the actor Matthew Goode who plays him in The Imitation Game, Alexander nevertheless had a reputation for urbanity and charm. In 1941, he was transferred to Hut 8 and became Turing's deputy. The great man would tease Alexander for being almost, but not quite, his intellectual equal. According to a memoir written by one of his colleagues: "We all thought Hugh was crazy. Tall, blond, huge blue eyes, never stopped talking, a terrible energy." And in the words of another: "We worked [at Hut 8] through the war on a continuous three-shift basis.

The night shift was not generally popular because everybody quickly became tired through lack of proper sleep in the day; but Hugh had a strange passion for working at night and used to put himself on nights for weeks on end. This did not prevent him working much of the day as well – he seemed to thrive on this strange regime." Watch | Turing 'a war hero like Churchill' 01:27 Alexander's admiration for Turing was conditional – he found him annoying most of the time – and he eventually engineered a friendly coup against him to become the head of Hut 8. He did this because he rightly saw that Turing's gifts were being wasted on the admin side of running things: he needed thinking space. It was Alexander, more than anyone else, who recognised Turing's genius for what it was. Station X was run in quite an amateurish way by MI6. Such was the lack of professionalism, in fact, Alexander and Turing broke with protocol and went over the heads of their MI6 superiors to make a direct appeal to the Prime Minister, requesting more equipment and personnel. Churchill responded instantly, agreeing to the requests and notifying his Chief of Staff.

His memo was stamped with that memorable phrase of his: "Action This Day." The Colossus computer at Bletchley, used to decode Nazi messages Credit: Alamy When the Germans introduced a "super enciphered" method of transmitting the day's settings to their Enigma operators (using bigram tables), Alexander helped Turing develop a technique for breaking them called Banburismus, because it involved "punched holes on long sheets of paper printed in Banbury". Alexander also introduced a pneumatic tube system for transferring files and documents between huts. He had borrowed the idea from his pre-war job, working as the chief scientist with the John Lewis chain. After the war he became head of cryptanalysis at GCHQ. He died at the age of 64 in 1974 and there has been speculation that the stresses caused by the mental demands of his career led to his early death.

Joan Clarke (played by Keira Knightley) - female codebreaker who became engaged to Turing Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke in The Imitation Game Joan Clarke, by contrast, was a much calmer, less intense character, which is perhaps why she lived until 1996, long after she retired from GCHQ. Like Alexander, she had a first in maths from Cambridge; unlike him, when she was recruited to Bletchley Park she was told that her work there wouldn't really require mathematics. This turned out not to be the case. After a period of clerical work with "the girls", her mathematical gifts led to her becoming the only woman among a team of nine Banburists. And according to her boss, Alexander, she was "one of the best Banburists in the section". Clarke wasn't as glamorous as Keira Knightley , who plays her in the film, but her character is captured well by the actress. Records describe her as "congenial but shy, gentle and kind, non-aggressive and always subordinate to the men in her life". Her enthusiasm and energy were legendary.

She would often be reluctant to hand over her workings at the end of her shift and instead continue to see if a few more calculations would produce a result. Decoder Wrens working in Huts 6 and 8 at Bletchley Park during the Second World War A pay rise was arranged to recognise her contributions to the team and she was promoted to "Linguist" even though she spoke no other language. She delighted in answering a questionnaire with "Grade: Linguist. Languages: none". In the spring of 1941, she developed a close friendship with her Hut 8 colleague Turing. For a time, they became inseparable, with Turing arranging their shifts so they could work together. One day, in his awkward way, he proposed marriage to her and when Clarke accepted he added, "But don't count on it working out as I have homosexual tendencies." The romance continued regardless, unconsummated, until they called it off by mutual consent a year later. Clarke became deputy head of Hut 8 in early 1944 and, after the war, she married an Army officer she had met when working at GCHQ.

Stewart Menzies (played by Mark Strong) Stewart Menzies; Mark Strong as Stewart Menzies in The Imitation Game Credit: Getty Arguably, the next most important figure at Bletchley was Stewart Menzies. His grandfather was a wealthy whisky distiller and his parents were friends of Edward VII, who was rumoured to be Menzies's real father. At Eton he was sporty but never academic, and he didn't go to university afterwards but joined the Life Guards instead. At the start of the war he became "C", the head of MI6. Churchill was initially sceptical about whether Menzies was up to the job, but he eventually made him part of his inner circle and Menzies would report to him daily. Though not a codebreaker himself, it was Menzies who was in overall charge at Bletchley, and it was he who introduced what was called Ultra. If too many of the intercepts from Bletchley were acted upon, the Germans would get suspicious that the Enigma codes had been cracked.

Menzies therefore introduced a system that meant only a certain percentage of the intelligence gleaned from decoding would be passed on to the British Army, Navy and RAF. In addition to being married three times, he had a long-term affair with his secretary. He retired with the rank of major general. John Cairncross (played by Allen Leech) - loner later revealed to be part of the Cambridge spy ring John Cairncross; Allen Leech as John Cairncross in The Imitation Game It is implied in the film that Menzies knew exactly what the spy John Cairncross was up to at Station X. An intelligent, spiky man, Cairncross was described by his colleagues at Bletchley Park as "a bit of a loner". This was an understatement given that he was the Fifth Man in the Cambridge spy ring. He knew Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, but didn't like them much. He admitted to spying in 1951 when Guy Burgess fled to Moscow and MI5 found a handwritten note from him in Burgess's flat. Cairncross arrived at Bletchley Park in 1942 and went to work in Hut 3 on Germany Army group communications.

Unusually for a codebreaker, he read languages at Cambridge, rather than mathematics. Watch | How did the Enigma machine work? 02:25 Throughout the war, Cairncross passed documents through secret channels to his KGB handlers, who gave him the code name Liszt, because of his love of music. He smuggled the decrypts out of the hut in his trousers, transferring them to his bag at the railway station. But the truth is probably more ambiguous than this summary of his treachery allows. The Allies wanted the Soviets to know about certain German battle plans, just not where the intelligence came from. They were our wartime allies, after all. Given the tight security at Bletchley, there is speculation that Menzies arranged things so that Cairncross was fed with documents that he wanted the Soviets to see. It seems the only explanation for why only the most relevant decrypts were left conveniently lying around, and why Cairncross was never searched as he left Bletchley.

Peter Hilton (played by Matthew Beard) - maths genius and inventor of one of the world's longest palindromes Peter Hilton; Matthew Beard as Peter Hilton in The Imitation Game Our next notable Bletchley figure could not have been more different from prickly Cairncross. Unusually for a Bletchley Park mathematician, the precocious, sweet-natured Peter Hilton had studied at Oxford rather than Cambridge. He was recruited in 1942 at the tender age of 18 because he also knew German (a language he had taught himself in a year). He worked alongside Turing in Hut 8 on Naval Enigma and, thanks to his extraordinary powers of visualisation, he was able to unpick in his mind's eye streams of characters from two separate teleprinters – a feat of mental gymnastics that proved vital when the Germans introduced a new system of teleprinter ciphers produced by a much larger and more complex machine than Enigma. Many years after the war, this was revealed to be a Lorenz SZ40 encoder, but, at the time, staff at Bletchley Park called it "Tunny".

In his off-duty hours, Hilton (played by Matthew Beard in the film) earned a reputation as a convivial companion. Was Alan Turing murdered? New book claims he didn't kill himself | Daily Mail Online comments Alan Turing, who was instrumental in cracking the Nazi Enigma code, was found dead in 1954 at the age of 41 - reportedly from suicide Code-breaking genius Alan Turing - played by Benedict Cumberbatch in hit film The Imitation Game - was murdered, a new book claims. The brilliant mathematician who cracked Hitler's Engima wartime code machines was found dead in 1954 at the age of 41. Author Roger Bristow claims a note from the pathologist casts doubt over the official conclusion of suicide. The post mortem report said he died from cyanide poisoning, but the note adds that: 'Death appears to be due to violence.' Mr. Bristow, a former mayor who has spent almost 30 years researching Turing and his work at Bletchley Park, said he was carrying out secret work before his death.

He believes the code-cracker was killed by the FBI because he had information that would be 'extremely damaging or embarrassing.' Mr Bristow adds that Turing had been working on the top secret operation Verona, deciphering wartime radio signals to identify Russian agents in the United States. He describes how some of the agents managed to get themselves into highly prominent positions, with one even becoming a personal assistant to President Roosevelt. Turing, who was prosecuted for being gay, was found dead in his bedroom in Wilmslow, Cheshire in June 1954. Two years earlier he had been convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration. A post mortem found traces of potassium cyanide in his body - a substance he used for his chemical experiments. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share Mr Bristow, a founder member of Bletchley Park Trust and former Milton Keynes mayor, said: 'I believe he was killed, perhaps by the FBI, and his death was made to look like a suicide.

Alan Turing's incredible life and work at Bletchley Park in World War II has been portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured) in The Imitation Game Cumberbatch plays the genius mathematician, opposite co-stars Keira Knightley, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode and Allen Leech (pictured in a scene from the film), as he cracks the Nazi Enigma code - a major factor in the Battle of the Atlantic 'My theory is that he had stumbled upon some information that could be extremely damaging or embarrassing to certain people in America. 'His body was found on the Tuesday morning and he was buried by Wednesday afternoon. How could proper tests have been conducted in that time? 'Also there is no evidence he was depressed before his death. In fact there are reports from neighbours that he seemed cheerful.

'But the final sentence on the pathologist report says it all: 'Death appears to be due to violence.' Turing, played by Cumberbatch, dances with Joan Clarke- a cryptanalist at Bletchley Park, played by Keira Knightly, in The Imitation Game 'We, as a nation, need that sentence explained before we can accept that one of our greatest heroes was not a victim of murder.' Turing received a royal pardon from the Queen last year and in 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown officially apologised on behalf of the British government for 'the appalling way he was treated' Mr. Bristow is now attempting to find a publisher for his manuscript 'Boffins, Bombs, Boats and Balloons'.

Question: Who is the latest actor to portray Alan Turing's fiance, Joan Clarke, in film?
Answer: Keira Knightley