Scholar Studies Turing's 6-Page Story, Recasting Him Beyond 2014 Film

Q: What did Alan Turing write after his conviction that challenges his tragic hero image?

After his 1952 conviction, Alan Turing wrote an unfinished six-page short story, **“Pryce’s Buoy,”** and it is this piece that most clearly challenges his tragic-hero image. According to Cambridge professor Sarah Dillon, who transcribed and studied the manuscript, the story was likely written in late 1952 or early 1953. It is an autofictional work centered on a scientist, Alec Pryce, and a working-class sex worker, Ron Miller, as they navigate the uncertainty of a possible sexual encounter. Dillon argues the story shows Turing as “playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex,” rather than the cold, isolated and tortured figure often presented in popular culture. The manuscript is especially significant because it was written after Turing’s prosecution for homosexuality. Rather than suggesting a man crushed into silence, it points to someone still creatively engaged, sexually self-aware and capable of humor and emotional nuance. Dillon says it reveals a Turing whose “sexual spirit was not dampened,” directly pushing back against the one-dimensional portrayal reinforced by works such as *The Imitation Game*. In short, the key text is **“Pryce’s Buoy,”** an unfinished short story that recasts Turing as more joyful, complex and defiantly alive than the standard tragic narrative suggests.

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jul 24

Sarah Dillon has fully transcribed and analyzed “Pryce’s Buoy,” a six-page unfinished story Alan Turing likely wrote in late 1952 or early 1953, arguing it reveals a playful, literary man comfortable with sex.
The King’s College, Cambridge, manuscript had been known to specialists but never fully studied by a literary scholar, partly because Turing’s handwriting was difficult and the text had been sidelined.
Dillon says the story’s scientist character, Alec Pryce, is clearly autofictional, and its account of a tentative encounter with a male sex worker shows Turing capturing sexual uncertainty, humor and desire.
Her reading challenges the popular image reinforced by the 2014 film “The Imitation Game,” which she says wrongly cast Turing as humorless, isolated and unwilling to collaborate.
Published in the Review of English Studies, the findings add to a broader reassessment of Turing, who was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952 and died in 1954 after helping pioneer computing and codebreaking.