This was not home, but it had to do. The parents came to England as often as they could, but even when they did, that was not home either. When Mrs Turing returned in spring 1915, she took the boys into furnished and serviced rooms in St Leonards – gloomy places decorated by samplers embroidered¹ with the more sacrificial kind of hymn². By this time Alan could talk, and proved himself the kind of little boy who could attract the attention of strangers with precocious³, rather penetratingly high-pitched comments, but also a naughty and wilful⁴ one, in whom winning ways could rapidly give way to tantrums when he was thwarted⁵. Experiment, as with planting his broken toy sailors in the ground, hoping they would grow afresh, was easily confused with naughtiness. Alan was slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience and resisted the duties of his childhood. Late, untidy and cheeky, he had constant battles with his mother, Nanny and Mrs Ward⁶.