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  • The untold story of Bletchley Park And Alan Turing comes to Cast, Doncaster

    Following the recent 70th anniversary celebrations of VE Day, Idle Motion’s That Is All You Need To Know brings the untold story of Bletchley Park to Cast, Doncaster on Wednesday 17 June in a stunning piece of visual theatre.

    Total Theatre Award nominated Idle Motion takes the audience back to 1940s England and the melting pot of Britain’s greatest minds; to the eccentric country house whose grounds, filled with chess champions, Oxbridge graduates and young debutantes. Among these were the visionary Alan Turing (recently portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in Oscar nominated The Imitation Game), the exceptional Gordon Welchman, and the thousands of dynamic women whose work was the hidden heroism of the war.

    Idle Motion are one of the countries leading visual theatre companies who tour nationally and internationally to critical acclaim. They integrate playful stagecraft with innovative video projection to create highly visual theatre that places human stories at the heart of the work. Their humorous and sensitive past productions include the Edinburgh Fringe Sell-Out Borges and I, and The Seagull Effect exploring a couple’s crumbling relationship as Britain is hit by the unexpected 1987 storm.

    Alan Turing was prosecuted for his homosexuality in 1952, Idle Motion learned about his life and subsequent premature death (while researching chaos theory for The Seagull Effect) before he was posthumously pardoned in 2013. Fascinated by this British mathematician, cryptologist and co-author of the foundations of computer science, the Idle Motion team intended to base their next work on his life story.

    Following research into Turing’s incredible work during the Second World War at Bletchley Park and visits to the site itself, the Idle Motion team realised that Bletchley Park was full of astounding stories and people. What stood out most remarkably was that the thousands of people who worked there kept it all a secret throughout the war and for most of their lives, and this was the story the company wanted to tell.

    Artistic Director Paul Slater read Gordon Welchman’s ‘The Hut Six Story- Breaking the Enigma Codes’, first published in 1982 and written in the 1970s. This book was one of the earliest memoirs of life at the park to be published after the ‘secret’ history came out in 1974. The style of the writing in and the insights it gave to the life and work provided an ideal foundation to the wider story of the Park itself and the structure of That Is All You Need To Know.

    That Is All You Need to Know incorporates correspondence; including Turing’s 1952 “Yours in distress” letter to his friend and fellow mathematician Norman Routledge shortly before pleading guilty to gross indecency; and voice overs of interviews with veterans who worked there during the war from the Bletchley Park archives .

    Using personal testimony and multimedia on a stage busy with filing cabinets and typewriters; That is All You Need to Know is an insightful, innovative and immersive celebration of the remarkable men and women who cracked the Enigma code. The play is a celebration of humanities ability to solve the impossible, to crack the most complex of problems, and of the extraordinary people whose quiet work changed the course of our history.

    Tickets for That Is All You Need To Know on Wednesday 17 June at 7.30pm are £15 adults / £13 concessions* available from Cast’s Box Office on 01302 303 959 or castindoncaster.com.

  • Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Reject Campaign For Gay Pardons

    Prince William and his wife Kate have refused to join the movement to pardon gay men who were criminalised in the UK for being gay, despite a huge campaign led by Benedict Cumberbatch and Stephen Fry.

    The campaign is seeking the pardon of around 49,000 men who were prosecuted for their sexuality, a crime that was highlighted in the blockbuster film, The Imitation Game, starring Cumberbatch, who portrayed Alan Turing. Alan Turing was a computer scientist who in World War II cracked the infamous enigma code, which helped to bring about a swifter end to the war against the Nazis. Sir Winston Churchill described the code breaker as having “made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory in the Second World War”.

    Around 15,000 men are still estimated to be alive.

    Within years of this great achievement, Turing was convicted of Gross Indecency, and his punishment was to be chemically castrated. Within two years he had committed suicide.

    In 2009, Gordon Brown posthumously pardoned Turing with an “unequivocal apology”. Four years later the Queen granted a pardon under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy. Campaigners are asking that pardons like these be extended to all men who were charged and convicted of these homophobic laws.

    In a letter to the Government, which was published in the Guardian, campaigners called for royal family to add their support to the cause, saying,

    “The UK’s homophobic laws made the lives of generations of gay and bisexual men intolerable.

    “It is up to young leaders of today including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to acknowledge this mark on our history and not allow it to stand.

    “We call upon Her Majesty’s Government to begin a discussion about the possibility of a pardoning all the men, alive or deceased, who like Alan Turing, were convicted.”

    A spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge said the issue was a matter for the government and they would not make any public comment on it.

  • Code Breaker Alan Turing pardoned by the Queen

    The Queen has posthumously pardoned ‘Code Breaker’ Alan Turing under the Royal Prerogative of Mercy.

    Alan Turing, a World War II hero has been granted a posthumous pardon by the Queen. He was prosecuted and sentenced to chemical castration in 1952 for ‘gross indecency’ after it was found he was in a relationship with a man.

    Two years later in 1954, Turing killed himself.

    David Cameron said,

    ‘Alan Turing was a remarkable man who played a key role in saving this country in World War Two by cracking the German Enigma code

    ‘His action saved countless lives. He also left a remarkable national legacy through his substantial scientific achievements, often being referred to as the father of modern computing.’

    Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has written to the Prime Minister urging a new inquiry into the death of the scientist Alan Turing, who has just been granted a royal pardon for his 1952 conviction for homosexual relations.

    ‘The government should open a new inquiry into the death of gay war-time code-breaker, mathematical genius and computer pioneer Alan Turing, including an investigation into the possibility he was murdered by the security services,’ said Peter Tatchell, Director of the human rights advocacy organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation,

    ‘The security services would have been very fearful that Turing was vulnerable to blackmail and anxious that he might pass information to the Soviets, as did the British nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, who was convicted in 1950 of assisting the Soviet Union’s atomic programme. There was an irrational, paranoid fear that other leading scientists might also aid the Soviets.

    ‘Although there is no evidence that Turing was murdered by state agents, the fact that this possibility has never been investigated is a major failing. The original inquest into his death was perfunctory and inadequate. Although it is said that he died from eating an apple laced with cyanide, the allegedly fatal apple was never tested for cyanide. A new inquiry is long overdue, even if only to dispel any doubts about the true cause of his death.

    ‘Turing was regarded as a high security risk because of his homosexuality and his expert knowledge of code-breaking, advanced mathematics and computer science. At the time of his death, Britain was gripped by a MacCarthyite-style anti-homosexual witch-hunt. Gay people were being hounded out of the armed forces and the civil and foreign services’