Free Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges

prolonged. She had a friend called Mrs Gervis, the wife of a science master at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset. In spring 1926 Alan took the examination again, and was accepted by Sherborne.
    Sherborne was one of the original English public schools, whose origins 12 lay in the abbey which itself was one of the first sites of English Christianity and in a charter of 1550 establishing the school for local education. In 1869, however, Sherborne had fallen into line as a boarding school on Dr Arnold’s model. After a period of low repute, it had revived in 1909 when a Nowell Smith was appointed headmaster. By 1926 Nowell Smith had doubled the roll from two hundred to four hundred, and had established Sherborne as a moderately distinguished public school.
    Mrs Turing paid a visit to Sherborne before Alan went there and was able to see the headmaster’s wife. She gave Mrs Nowell Smith ‘some hints about what to expect’ and Mrs Nowell Smith ‘contrasted her description with the more favourable accounts given by other parents of their boys.’ It was probably at her suggestion that Alan was put down to board at Westcott House, whose housemaster was Geoffrey O’Hanlon.
    The summer term was due to start on Monday 3 May 1926 which was, it so happened, the first day of the general strike. On the ferry from St Malo Alan heard that only the milk trains would be running. But he knew he could cycle the sixty miles west from Southampton to Sherborne:
     
So I cycled as programme left luggage with baggage master started out of docks about 11 o’clock got map for 3/-including Southampton missing Sherborne by about 3 miles. Noted where Sherborne was just outside. With an awful strive, found General Post Office, sent wire O’Hanlon 1/-. Found cycle shop, had things done 6d. Left 12 o’clock had lunch 7 miles out 3/6 went on to Lyndhurst 3 miles got apple 2d. went on to Beerley 8 miles pedal a bit wrong had it done 6d. went on Ringwood 4 miles.
The streets in Southampton were full of people who had struck. Had a lovely ride through the New Forest and then over a sort of moor into Ringwood and quite flat again to Wimborne.
    Alan stayed overnight at the best hotel in Blandford Forum – an expedient that would hardly have been approved by his father. (Alan had to account for every penny that he spent: no mere figure of speech, for his letter ended ‘Sending back £1-0-1 in £ note and penny stamp.’) But the proprietors only charged a nominal amount and saw him off in the morning. Then:
     
Just near Blandford some nice downs and suddenly merely undulating near all the way here but the last mile was all downhill.
    From WestHill he could see his destination: the little Georgian town of Sherborne and the school itself by the abbey.
    For a boy of his class to improvise a solution without a fuss was not at all the expected thing. The bicycle journey was regarded with astonishment, and was reported in the local newspaper. 13 While Winston Churchill called for the ‘unconditional surrender’ of the ‘enemy’ miners, Alan had made the most of the general strike for himself. He had enjoyed two days of freedom outside the usual system. But they were over very quickly. There was a book 14 about life at Sherborne, The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh, and this described the sensations:
     
The new boy’s first week at a Public School is probably the most wretched he will ever pass in his life. It is not that he is bullied … it is merely that he is utterly lonely, is in constant fear of making mistakes, and so makes for himself troubles that do not exist.
    When his hero wrote home at the end of his second day, ‘it did not need a very clever mother to read between the lines and see her son was hopelessly miserable.’ It was worse for Alan, for he could not even merge inconspicuously while all his belongings were stuck at Southampton by the strike. At the end of his first week:
     
Its an awful nuisance here without any of my clothes