After the 2014 feature film The Imitation Game and other publicity most people are now aware of the amazing contribution made by Alan Turing and the remarkable team at Bletchley Park during World War 2. It is often said that their efforts helped the Allies to win the war and it most certainly shortened hostilities by a couple of years.

Very sadly, Alan Turing’s ground-breaking computer science work in the early 1940s was not properly appreciated in his lifetime, partly because of the Official Secrets Act but mainly because of the social prejudices of that period – Turing was a gay man. That he was not properly recognised in his own lifetime is a mortal sin but at least in these more enlightened times he is receiving the appreciation and awards for his contribution to the world we now enjoy.

Part of this recognition has come with Alan Turing’s appearance on the new £50 polymer bank note. With only four bank note denominations in circulation in England this is a very rare and welcome honour. Interestingly, in issuing these new notes the Bank of England have stated that demand has never been higher for notes and that the £50 note represents 13% of the notes in circulation.

Turing The Hockey Player

Our research has revealed he played hockey at Sherborne School as a boy. Courtesy of Sherborne School Archives, we have a copy of a drawing by his mother, Ethel Sara Turing, of Alan ‘participating’ in a school hockey match. Turing is recorded by The Hockey Museum as a hockey player and in due course he will feature in Hockey’s Military Stories, one of our on-going research projects.

One final twist in the tale relevant to The Hockey Museum in Woking: following his death in 1954 Alan Turing was cremated at Woking Crematorium.

Hockey or Watching the daisies Grow by Mrs Ethel Sara Turing, 1923. Image courtesy of Sherborne School Archives.

Banking On Your Support

With the launch of the Alan Turing £50 note, we are asking you to please consider donating a similar sum to The Hockey Museum. Your donation will help us to research new stories, continue to grow – like young Alan and his distracting daisies – and become better-known in the hockey world … less of an Enigma if you will!

If you can’t give £50 we will gratefully receive donations of any size.

Please click here to visit our online donation page make a one-off donation by card or PayPal.

Very many thanks from The Hockey Museum team.