《艾伦图灵传》第1章1:他得学会合群
 Part One THE LOGICAL Esprit de Corps
第一章：他得学会合群
Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much,
探索伊始，我心已醉。
The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion,
只说那微妙的知觉，形态，力量，
The least insect or animal, the senses, eyesight, love,
只说那轻巧的昆虫，动物，还有感受，还有目光，
The first step I say awed me and pleas'd me so much,
还有爱，都让我由心敬畏，欣然忘食。
I have hardly gone and hardly wish'd to go any farther,
我止步不前，不再期待远方，
But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.
我要留在这里，用狂喜的曲子，不住地歌唱。
A son of the British Empire, Alan Turing's social origins lay just on the borderline between the landed gentry and the commercial classes. As merchants, soldiers and clergymen, his ancestors had been gentlemen, but not of the settled kind. Many of them had made their way through the expansion of British interests throughout the world.
大英帝国之子艾伦•图灵，出身于一个半贵族半资产阶级的家族。在他的祖先中，有上流社会的商人、军人和牧师。随着不列颠席卷全球的扩张，他们也开拓了自己的世界。
The Turings could be traced back to Turins of Foveran, Aberdeenshire, in the fourteenth century. There was a baronetcy in the family, created in about 1638 for a John Turing, who left Scotland for England. Audentes Fortuna Juvat (Fortune Helps the Daring) was the motto of the Turings, but however brave, they were never very lucky. Sir John Turing backed the losing side in the English civil war, while Foveran was sacked by the Covenanters. Denied compensation after the Restoration, the Turings languished in obscurity during the eighteenth century, as the family history, the Lay of the Turings1, was to describe:
上溯到公元14世纪，图灵家族发源于北苏格兰阿伯丁郡的佛汶然地区。1638年，这个家族里有一位准男爵，叫约翰•图灵，他离开了苏格兰，来到英格兰。图灵家族的信条是「勇者好运」，但不幸的是，约翰勇气有余，却没遇到好运。在英国内战中，准男爵吃了败仗，佛汶然遭到大肆洗掠，在王政复辟后，他也没有得到赔偿。于是，到了18世纪，图灵的家族没落了。在他的家史上，有这么一首歌谣：
《艾伦图灵传》第1章2:歌谣
 Sir Robert Turing brought back a fortune from India in 1792 and revived the title. But he, and all the senior branches of the family, died off without male heirs, and by 1911 there were but three small clusters of Turings in the world. The baronetcy was held by the 84-year-old eighth baronet, who had been British Consul in Rotterdam. Then there was his brother, and his descendants, who formed a Dutch branch of Turings. The junior branch consisted of the descendants of their cousin, John Robert Turing, who was Alan's grandfather.
歌谣里的故事是这样：1972年，罗伯特•图灵爵士从印度归来，终于带回好运，恢复了爵位和领地。但是，图灵家族并没有真正复兴，因为他和家族的各大支系，都偏偏没儿子。到1911年，图灵家族只剩三个很小的分支，一位84岁的英国驻鹿特丹领事继承了爵位，带领兄弟儿孙，在荷兰形成了一个分支。还有一位约翰•罗伯特•图灵，带着他的后代，形成了另一个小分支，这位就是艾伦•图灵的祖父。
John Robert Turing took a degree in mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1848, and was placed eleventh in rank, but abandoned mathematics for ordination and a Cambridge curacy. In 1861 he married nineteen year old Fanny Boyd and left Cambridge for a living in Nottinghamshire, where he fathered ten children. Two died in infancy and the surviving four girls and four boys were brought up in a regime of respectable poverty on a clerical stipend. Soon after the birth of his youngest son, John Robert suffered a stroke and resigned his living. He died in 1883.
1848年，约翰•罗伯特•图灵以第11名的成绩，获得剑桥大学三一学院的数学学位。但他随后放弃了数学，就任圣职，当了牧师。1861年，他娶了19岁的范妮•博伊德，并离开剑桥，定居在诺丁汉郡。在那里，他们一共生了十个孩子，有两个幼年夭折，剩下的四男四女，全靠他的牧师薪水维持生计。1883年，在他最小的儿子出生后不久，约翰罹患中风，见了上帝。
As his widow was an invalid, the care of the family fell upon the eldest sister Jean, who ruled with a rod of iron. The family had moved to Bedford to take advantage of its grammar school, where the two elder boys were educated. Jean started her own school, and two of the other sisters went out as schoolteachers, and generally sacrificed themselves for the sake of advancing the boys. The eldest son, Arthur, was another Turing whom fortune did not help: he was commissioned in the Indian Army, but was ambushed and killed on the North-West Frontier in 1899. The third son Harvey2 emigrated to Canada, and took up engineering, though he was to return for the First World War and then turn to genteel journalism, becoming editor of the Salmon and Trout Magazine and fishing editor of The Field. The fourth son Alick became a solicitor. Of the daughters only Jean was to marry: her husband was Sir Herbert Trustram Eve, a Bedford estate agent who became the foremost rating surveyor of his day. The formidable Lady Eve, Alan 's Aunt Jean, became a moving spirit of the London County Council Parks Committee. Of the three unmarried aunts, kindly Sybil became a Deaconess and took the Gospel to the obstinate subjects of the Raj. And true to this Victorian story, Alan's grandmother Fanny Turing succumbed to consumption in 1902.
他的遗孀范妮身体羸弱，持家的重任落在年长而坚强的姐姐珍妮肩上。为了让家里的男孩接受良好的教育，他们举家搬到了贝德福德。珍妮办了一所学校，并让两个妹妹在里面教书，几位姑娘日夜操劳，一心为了让家里的男孩们成才。不幸的是，长子阿瑟又成了图灵家族的一位勇敢却不走运的人：他应征去印度当兵，结果在1899年西北边界战中遭到伏击，当场战死。三儿子哈维移民到加拿大，成为一名工程师，后来在第一次世界大战时回国，改行做《鲑鱼与鳟鱼》和《田地》杂志的编辑。小儿子艾里克当了律师。家中的女孩们，只有珍妮结婚了，嫁给贝德福德的一位地产商，赫伯特•特拉斯坦•伊夫爵士。另一个女孩希比尔，成为一名宗教执事，夹着一本福音书到处传教。1902年，在维多利亚时代的最后，艾伦的祖母范妮•图灵死于结核。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章3:艾伦的父亲
 Julius Mathison Turing, Alan's father, was the second son, born on 9 November 1873. Devoid of his father's mathematical ability, he was an able student of literature and history, and won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from where he graduated with a BA in 1894. He never forgot his early life of enforced economy, and typically never paid the 'farcical' three guineas to convert the BA into an MA. But he never spoke of the miseries of his childhood, too proud to moan of what he had left behind and risen above, for his life as a young man was a model of success. He entered for the Indian Civil Service, which had been thrown open to entry by competitive examination in the great liberal reform of 1853, and which enjoyed a reputation surpassing even that of the Foreign Office. He was placed seventh out of 154 in the open examination of August 18953. His studies of the various branches of Indian law, the Tamil language and the history of British India then won him seventh place again in the Final IC Sexamination of 1896.
在刚才的介绍中，有一位还没提到，也就是约翰的二儿子，生于1873年11月9日的朱利叶斯•马西森•图灵──这位就是艾伦的父亲。朱利叶斯没有继承约翰的数学天赋，而是成了一名文科高材生。1894年，他获得牛津大学基督学院的学士学位，还拿了奖学金。他忘不了童年时期的窘困，拒绝继续花钱读书。他是个很好强的人，从不跟人谈论童年的苦，也不抱怨自己遇到的种种荆棘坎坷。他希望进入印度文职机构，自从1853自由改革以来，印度文职人员的竞争异常激烈，甚至比英国外交部还要难考。但是苦心人天不负，在1895年8月的统一考试中，朱利叶斯在154人当中排名第七。他对印度各项法律、塔米尔语及英属印度史颇有造诣，在1896年的复试中，他又考了第七名。
He was posted to the administration of the Presidency of Madras, which included most of southern India, reporting for duty on 7 December 1896, the senior in rank of seven new recruits to that province. British India had changed since Sir Robert left it in 1792. Fortune no longer helped the daring; fortune awaited the civil servant who could endure the climate for forty years. And while (as a contemporary writer put it) the district officer was 'glad of every opportunity to cultivate intercourse with the natives,' the Victorian reforms had ensured that 'the doubtful alliances which in old days assisted our countrymen to learn the languages' were 'no longer tolerated by morality and society.' The Empire had become respectable.
1896年7月，复试的前7名被调到印度的马德拉斯省，朱利叶斯随之走马上任了。这个省覆盖了印度南方的大半疆域，朱利叶斯在此就任民政事务官。跟1792年罗伯特爵士离开时相比，此时的印度，一切都已经不同了。勇者不再有什么好运，能忍受40年酷暑的公务员才有好运。据当时的一位作家记载，这位民政官非常乐于与当地人交流感情。维多利亚改革，使印度社会逐渐现代化，大英帝国也开始受到真正的尊敬了。
With the help of a ￡100 loan from a family friend he bought his pony and saddlery, and was sent off into the interior. For ten years he served in the districts of Bellary, Kurnool and Vizigapatam as Assistant Collector and Magistrate. There he rode from village to village, reporting upon agriculture, sanitation, irrigation, vaccination, auditing accounts, and overseeing the native magistracy. He added the Telugu language to his repertoire, and became Head Assistant Collector in 1906. In April 1907 he made a first return to England. It was the traditional point for the rising man, after a decade of lonely labour, to seek a wife. It was on the voyage home that he met Ethel Stoney.
不久，朱利叶斯又调任到内政部，临走时向亲戚借了100英镑，买了马具和一匹小马。他在贝拉里、卡努尔和维萨卡帕特南地区，当了10年助理税务官兼法官。他每天骑着他的小马，走过一村又一村，上至审计监察，下至播种灌溉，什么都要管。1906年，他转正了，成为首席税务官。1907年4月，他第一次回国，这位背井离乡孤独奋战了十多年的男人，终于又要踏上英国的土地了，对他来说，也是时候该成家了。就在这趟回国的途中，他遇到了艾赛儿•斯托尼，也就是艾伦的母亲。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章4:祖先
 Alan's mother4 was also the product of generations of empire-builders, being descended from a Yorkshireman, Thomas Stoney (1675-1726) who as a young man acquired lands in England's oldest colony after the 1688 revolution, and who became one of the Protestant landowners of Catholic Ireland. His estates in Tipperary passed down to his great-great-grandson Thomas George Stoney (1808-1886), who had five sons, the eldest inheriting the lands and the rest dispersing to various parts of the expanding empire. The third son was a hydraulic engineer, who designed sluices for the Thames, the Manchester Ship Canal and the Nile; the fifth emigrated to New Zealand, and the fourth, Edward Waller Stoney (1844-1931), Alan's maternal grandfather, went to India as an engineer. There he amassed a considerable fortune, becoming chief engineer of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway, responsible for the construction of the Tangabudra bridge, and the invention of Stoney's Patent Silent Punkah-Wheel.
艾赛儿•斯托尼的祖先，也是大英帝国的开拓者。在1688年的革命之后，约克郡的一位年轻人，托马斯•斯托尼（1675-1726）在英国最早的殖民地上拥有了土地。他在蒂珀雷里建了一座庄园，后来传给了他孙子的孙子，托马斯•乔治•斯托尼（1808-1886）。后面这位托马斯一共有五个儿子，大儿子继续接管了庄园，其他人则随着帝国的扩张各奔四方。三儿子成为水利工程师，为泰晤士河、曼城运河和尼罗河设计过水闸。小儿子移民去了新西兰，四儿子爱德华•沃勒•斯托尼（1844-1931）到印度当了工程师，这就是艾伦的外祖父。在印度，爱德华平步青云，攒下一笔非常可观的财富，成为马德拉斯铁路的首席工程师，负责建设唐各布达拉桥，还发明斯托尼无声涡轮。
A hard-headed, grumpy man, Edward Stoney married Sarah Crawford from another Anglo-Irish family, and they had two sons and two daughters. Of these, Richard followed his father as an engineer in India, Edward Crawford was a Major in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and Evelyn married an Anglo-Irish Major Kirwan of the Indian Army. Alan's mother, Ethel Sara Stoney, was born at Podanur, Madras, on 18 November 1881.
爱德华头脑精明，脾气却很糟糕。他娶了萨拉•克劳福德为妻，她来自一个住在爱尔兰的英格兰家庭。他们生了两儿两女：里查德子承父业，到印度做工程师；爱德华•克劳福德是皇家军医的一名少校；伊夫莲嫁给了印度军的柯万少校。还有一位艾塞儿•萨拉•斯托尼，就是艾伦的母亲，她于1881年11月18日，出生于印度马德拉斯省的博德努尔。
Although the Stoney family did not lack for funds, her early life was as grim as that of Julius Turing. All four Stoney children were sent back to Ireland to be educated. It was a pattern familiar to British India, whose children's loveless lives were part of the price of the Empire. They were landed upon their uncle William Crawford, a bank manager of County Clare, with two children of his own by a first marriage and four by a second. It was not a place for affection or attention. The Crawfords moved to Dublin in 1891, where Ethel dutifully went to school each day on the horse-bus, crushed by a regimen that permitted her a mean threepence for lunch. At seventeen, she was transferred to Cheltenham Ladies College, 'to get rid of her brogue,' and there she endured the legendary Miss Beale and Miss Buss, and the indignity of being the Irish product of the railway and the bank among the offspring of the English gentry. There remained a flickering dream of culture and freedom in Ethel Stoney's heart and for six months she was sent, at her own request, to study music and art at the Sorbonne. The brief experiment was vitiated by the discovery that French snobbery and Grundyism could equal that of the British Isles. So when in 1900 she returned with her elder sister Evie to her parents' grand bungalow in Coonoor, it was to an India which represented an end to petty privation, but left her knowing that there was a world of knowledge from which she had been forever excluded.
虽然斯托尼家并不缺钱，但是艾赛儿的童年生活并不比朱利叶斯愉快多少。家里的四个孩子，全被送回爱尔兰上学，远离父母。这是一个典型的英属印度家庭，这些孩子的童年，成为了英国扩张的牺牲品之一。他们寄宿在舅舅威廉姆•克劳福德家里，他是克莱尔郡的一位银行经理，结过两回婚，头婚有两个孩子，二婚有四个孩子。所以，这个地方对于四个小寄宿者来说，是一个没有爱和关怀的地方。 1891年，这一家搬到了都柏林，在那里，艾赛儿每天乏味地坐着马车去上学，每顿饭只花三便士，这对她的发育造成了一些影响。17岁时，她被送到切尔腾纳姆女子学院去「纠正土方言」。在那里，她受到了贵族子女们的歧视，他们嘲笑她是「铁道+银行」的产物。尽管如此，她的心里仍然有一个梦想在摇曳，她想学习音乐艺术。因此，她在6个月后，去了巴黎大学文理学院。但是，她在巴黎也没待多久，因为她很快就发现了，法国人在歧视别人这个方面，并不比英国人逊色。于是，在1900年，艾赛儿跟她的姐姐伊夫莲一起，前往古努尔跟父母一起生活。来到印度，她终于摆脱了生活压力，但同时也告别了知识的世界──反正那个世界似乎永远排斥她。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章5:古努尔
 For seven years, Ethel and Evie led the life of young ladies of Coonoor - driving out in carriages to leave visiting cards, painting in water-colours, appearing in amateur theatricals and attending formal dinners and balls in the lavish and stifling manner of the day. Once her father took the family on holiday to Kashmir, where Ethel fell in love with a missionary doctor, and he with her. But the match was forbidden, for the missionary had no money. Duty triumphed over love, and she remained in the marriage market. And thus the scene was set, in the spring of 1907, for the meeting of Julius Turing and Ethel Stoney on board the homebound ship.
艾赛儿和伊夫莲在印度待了七年，在这段日子里，她们引领了古努尔少女界的时尚潮流。驾马车，发名片，画水彩画，演戏剧，还有一套十分复杂的餐桌礼仪。在她父亲带着全家去克什米尔度假时，艾赛儿情窦初开，与一位传教士医生坠入了爱河。但由于这位可怜的传教士实在太穷，他们的感情最终被世俗击垮了，艾赛尔恢复单身，闰中待嫁。1907年春天，他们一起乘船回英国，在途中，艾赛尔邂逅了朱利叶斯。
They had taken the Pacific route, and the romance was under way before they reached Japan. Here Julius took her out to dinner and wickedly instructed the Japanese waiter to 'bring beer and keep on bringing beer until I tell you to stop.' Though an abstemious man, he knew when to live it up. He made a formal proposal to Edward Stoney for Ethel's hand, and this time, he being a proud, impressive young man in the 'heaven-born' ICS, it was successful. The beer story, however, did not impress his future father-in-law, who lectured Ethel upon the prospect of life with a reckless drunkard. Together they crossed the Pacific and the United States, where they spent some time in the Yellowstone National Park, shocked by the familiarity of the young American guide. The wedding took place on 1 October 1907 in Dublin. (There remained a certain edge to the relationship between Mr Turing and the commercial Mr Stoney, with an argument over who was to pay for the wedding carpet rankling for years.) In January 1908 they returned to India, and their first child John was born on 1 September at the Stoney bungalow at Coonoor. Mr Turing's postings then took them on long travels around Madras: to Parvatipuram, Vizigapatam, Anantapur, Bezwada, Chicacole, Kurnool and Chatrapur, where they arrived in March 1911.
他们走的是太平洋航路，还没等走到日本时，他们的爱情就已经不可收拾了。朱利叶斯其实是个有节制的男人，但是他也懂得什么时候该激动。他俩共进晚餐时，朱利叶斯对侍者说：「你给我拿啤酒来，一直拿，我不说停，你就一直拿。」等到他向爱德华提亲时，又摇身一变，成了光辉体面的印度公务官员。他的提亲成功了，但是啤酒这件事，着实给他的岳父留下了极坏的印象，他建议女儿，最好不要嫁给这种轻浮的酒鬼。他们穿越了太平洋和美国，期间还一起到黄石国家公园游玩，看到美国年轻人的亲热行为，感觉很震惊。1907年10月，他们在都柏林举行了婚礼，为了这场婚礼的花销该由谁出的问题，朱利叶斯和爱德华互相抱怨了好几年。1908年1月，他们夫妻二人回到印度，9月1日，在古努尔的家中生下了第一个孩子约翰•图灵。朱利叶斯利用职务之便，带着他们在马德拉斯好好玩了一顿，他们去了帕瓦蒂普然，维萨卡帕特南，安南塔普，博兹瓦达，奇卡克尔，卡努尔，在1911年3月，他们来到了查塔布尔。
It was at Chatrapur, in the autumn of 1911, that their second son, the future Alan Turing, was conceived. At this obscure imperial station, a port on the eastern coast, the first cells divided, broke their symmetry, and separated head from heart. But he was not to be born in British India. His father arranged his second period of leave in 1912, and the Turings sailed en famille for England.
在查塔布尔的深秋里，艾赛儿又有喜了，这是他们的第二个儿子，也就是未来的艾伦•图灵。在印度东海岸这个无名的小地方，他的第一个细胞形成了，渐渐分裂出大脑和心脏。朱利叶斯不想让他在印度出生，于是在1912年，他们一家回到了英国。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章6:返乡之旅
 This passage from India was a journey into a world of crisis. Strikes, suffragettes, and near civil war in Ireland had changed political Britain. The National Insurance Act, the Official Secrets Act, and what Churchill called 'the gigantic fleets and armies which impress and oppress the civilisation of our time,' all marked the death of Victorian certainties and the extended role of the state. The substance of Christian doctrine had long evaporated, and the authority of science held greater sway. Yet even science was feeling a new uncertainty. And new technology, enormously expanding the means of expression and communication, had opened up what Whitman had eulogised as the Years of the Modern, in which no one knew what might happen next - whether a 'divine general war' or a 'tremendous issuing forth against the idea of caste'.
这次返乡之旅，把这一家从印度带到了一个危险的世界。英国已经不是那个英国了：大罢工，妇女运动，爱尔兰内战，国民年金保险法，官方机密法，还有丘吉尔说「践踏现代文明的巨型四肢」，这一切都体现着维多利亚王权的丧失，和政府权力的扩张。宗教的地位也动摇了，取而代之的是同样让人迷茫的科学。新的技术改变了人们的沟通方式，就像惠特曼在《摩登时代》里面说的一样。没有人知道接下来会发生什么，是全面圣战，还是阶级清洗。
But this conception of the modern world was not shared by the Turings, who were no dreamers of the World-City. Well insulated from the twentieth century, and unfamiliar even with modern Britain, they were content to make the best of what the nineteenth had offered them. Their second son, launched into an age of conflicts with which he would become helplessly entangled, was likewise to be sheltered for twenty years from the consequences of the world crisis.
但是，世界的变化仿佛不关图灵家什么事，他们对此一点兴趣都没有。他们与二十世纪是绝缘的，一心只想把十九世纪剩下的东西搞搞好。而他们第二个儿子，却不得不降生在这个纠结的时代，他会措手不及地被卷入这场冲突，但同样也会被这冲突的结果庇护20年。
He was born on 23 June 1912 in a nursing home in Paddington,* and was baptised Alan Mathison Turing on 7 July. His father extended his leave until March 1913, the family spending the winter in Italy. He then returned to take up a new posting, but Mrs Turing stayed on with the two boys, Alan a babe in arms and John now four, until September 1913. Then she too departed. Mr Turing had decided that his sons were to stay in England, so as not to risk their delicate health in the heat of Madras. So Alan never saw the kind Indian servants, nor the bright colours of the East. It was in the bracing sea winds of the English Channel that his childhood was to be spent, in an exile from exile.
1912年6月23日，他在帕丁顿的一间产房注里诞生了。7月7日，他得名艾伦•马西森•图灵。朱利叶斯把假期延长到次年三月，他们一家前往意大利过冬。随后，他回到印度的工作岗位，而艾赛儿则留下来陪着两个孩子：初生不久的图灵，和四岁的约翰。1913年9月，她也回到了印度。朱利叶斯已经充分领教了马德拉斯的酷暑，于是决定让两个儿子留在英国。所以，艾伦从来没有跟这位亲切的印度官员一起生活过，也没有见过东方的鲜艳色彩。朱利叶斯背井离乡去印度，而艾伦却在英吉利海峡的风中度过童年，尽管这里是他的故土，但其实却是双重的背井离乡。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章7:寄养
 Mr Turing had farmed out his sons with a retired Army couple, Colonel and Mrs Ward. They lived at St Leonards-on-Sea, the seaside town adjoining Hastings, in a large house called Baston Lodge just above the sea front. Across the road was the house of Sir Rider Haggard, the author of King Solomon's Mines, and once, when Alan was older and dawdling along the gutter in his usual way, he found a diamond and sapphire ring belonging to Lady Haggard, who rewarded him with two shillings.
朱利叶斯把他的两个儿子寄养在一对军人夫妇家里，沃德上校和沃德夫人。他们住在黑斯廷一个名叫圣伦纳兹的海滨小镇，拥有一所海边的大房子。房子的对面，是赖德•哈葛德的家，他是《所罗门王的宝藏》的作者。有一天，渐渐长大的艾伦在路上闲逛，捡到了哈葛德夫人的一枚蓝宝石钻戒，夫人奖励他两先令。
The Wards were not the sort of people who dropped diamond rings in the street. Colonel Ward, ultimately kindly, was remote and gruff as God the Father. Mrs Ward believed in bringing up boys to be real men. Yet there was a twinkle in her eye and both boys became fond of 'Grannie'. In between lay Nanny Thompson, who ruled the nursery which was the boys' proper place, and the governess of the schoolroom. There were other children in the house, for the Wards had no fewer than four daughters of their own, as well as another boy boarder. Later they also took in the Turing boys' cousins, the three children of Major Kirwan. Alan was very fond of the Wards' second daughter Hazel, but hated the youngest Joan, who was intermediate in age between him and John.
沃德一家，可不是那种会把钻戒丢在路上的人。沃德上校，说得好听点儿，他冷酷就跟耶和华一样。沃德夫人则认为，抚养男孩，就要让他们长成真正的男人。她的眼睛里总是闪烁着愉快的光芒，两个孩子都很喜欢这位奶奶。他们真正的成长乐园，是南尼•汤姆森开办的幼儿园，那里还有别的孩子。沃德夫妇有至少四个女儿，还有其他寄养的孩子，不久后，他们还把艾伦的表弟表妹，也就是柯万上校的三个孩子也一起接过来寄养。艾伦非常喜欢沃德夫妇的二女儿海兹尔，但是讨厌最小的琼，琼比艾伦大，但是比约翰小。
Both Turing boys disappointed Mrs Ward, for they scorned fighting and toy weapons, even model Dreadnoughts. Indeed, Mrs Ward wrote to Mrs Turing complaining that John was a bookworm, and Mrs Turing loyally wrote to John chiding him. Walks on the windswept promenade, picnics on the stony beach, games at children's parties, and tea before a roaring fire in the nursery were the most that the Ward environment had to offer in the way of stimulation.
令沃德夫妇失望的是，图灵兄弟不屑于打架和玩具枪，甚至对无畏级战舰模型也不感兴趣。沃德夫人给图灵夫人写信，抱怨说约翰就是个书呆子，图灵夫人随后写信给约翰，把他责备了一番。沃德夫妇想了很多办法，希望激起他俩的玩兴，比如迎着微风散步，在海滩上野餐，办聚会做游戏，还有围着门前的篝火吃东西。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章8:图灵夫人
 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 embroidered with the more sacrificial kind of hymn. By this time Alan could talk, and proved himself the kind of little boy who could attract the attention of strangers with precocious, rather penetratingly high-pitched comments, but also a naughty and wilful one, in whom winning ways could rapidly give way to tantrums when he was thwarted. 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 Ward.
但是不管怎么样，这里都不是家，虽然图灵夫妇尽可能地多回英国，但即便在他们回来时，这个地方也不是家。图灵夫人1915年春天回来时，艾伦已经会说话了，他显得格外早熟，很会吸引别人的注意。在遇到挫折时，他非常倔强。他还把坏掉的木偶种到土里，希望能长出一个新的，不知道他是在做实验还是在故意捣乱。他还慢慢学会控制合作与不合作之间的界线，开始拒绝做一些小孩子该做的事。再后来，他开始动不动就跟南尼或沃德夫人吵嘴。
Mrs Turing returned to India in the autumn of 1915, saying to Alan, 'You'll be a good boy, won't you?', to which Alan replied 'Yes, but sometimes I shall forget!' But this separation was only for six months, for in March 1916 Sahib and Memsahib together braved the U-boats, wearing lifebelts all the way from Suez to Southampton. Mr Turing took his family for a holiday in the Western Highlands, where they stayed in an hotel at Kimelfort, and John was introduced to trout fishing. At the end of his leave, in August 1916, they decided not to risk travelling together again, but instead to separate for the next three-year period. Alan's father returned to India, and his mother resumed a double exile at St Leonards.
1915年秋天，图灵夫人要回印度了，她临走时问艾伦：你答应过妈妈，会学得很乖的，对不对？艾伦回答：对，但有时我就忘了！这次他们只分离了六个月，1916年3月，图灵夫妇冒着德军U型潜艇的危险，一路穿着救生衣，顺着苏伊士运河回到南安普顿。他们全家人去西部高地度假，住在开梅福德的一家酒店，图灵先生在那里教约翰钓鱼。1916年8月，他们决定不再冒这个危险了，未来的三年不能再见面。图灵先生返回印度，而艾伦的母亲则在圣伦纳兹留下来，和艾伦一起，过双重背井离乡的日子。
The Great War had remarkably little direct impact on the Turing family. The year 1917, with the mechanised slaughter, the U-boat siege, the air raids, the appearance of America and the Russian revolution, set up the pattern which was to be the newborn generation's inheritance. But it had no private meaning except in keeping Mrs Turing in England. John was packed off to a preparatory school called Hazelhurst near Tunbridge Wells in Kent in May of that year, and thereafter Mrs Turing had only Alan about her. Church-going was one of her favourite pastimes, and in St Leonards she adopted a certain very high Anglican church, where Alan was dragged every Sunday for the communion service. He did not like the incense, and called it 'the church with the bad smells'. Mrs Turing also pressed on with her water-colours, for which she enjoyed a definite talent. She took Alan out on her sketching parties where, with big eyes and sailor hat, and with quaint expressions of his own like 'quockling' for the screech of seagulls, he delighted the lady art students.
第一次世界大战，对图灵一家几乎没有什么影响。对于这一代人来说，世界给他们留下的遗产，似乎就是1917年的机械化屠杀，U型潜艇封锁，飞机地毯式轰炸，还有美俄革命爆发。但对于图灵一家，这些东西造成的唯一结果，就是图灵夫人一直留在英国。这一年5月，约翰被送到肯特郡的汤布里奇威尔斯附近的海兹赫斯特预科学校，于是只剩下艾伦陪伴在图灵夫人身边。她喜欢去教堂做礼拜，选了一个非常高的圣公会教堂，每个星期天都拉着艾伦去跟上帝交流。艾伦很讨厌教堂里的香，于是把它叫作「怪味教堂」。图灵夫人还要求艾伦学习水彩画，这是她的得意之技。她带着艾伦去看剧会，艾伦瞪着大眼睛，戴着水手帽，摆出一副古怪的表情，他喜欢看那些学艺术的女生。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章9:绅士
 Alan taught himself to read in about three weeks from a book called Reading without Tears. He was quicker, however, to recognise figures, and had an infuriating habit of stopping at every lamp post to identify its serial number. He was one of those many people without a natural sense of left and right, and he made a little red spot on his left thumb, which he called 'the knowing spot'.
艾伦通过一本《快乐阅读》，用三周时间学会了阅读，他还用更短的时间学会了识数，并且养成了一个烦人的习惯：每次走过路灯时，都要停下来看上面的编号。但是，艾伦分不清楚左右，他在左手的拇指上画了一个红点，称为「识别点」，通过它，来判断哪边是左。
He would say that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up - an ambition that would have been agreeable to the Turings, for his father would approve of the fees, and his mother of the distinguished clients and the practice of good works. But he could not learn to be a doctor on his own. It was time for some education. And so in the summer of 1918 Mrs Turing sent him to a private day school called St Michael's, to learn Latin.
艾伦的理想，是当一名医生，这是一个令家人很高兴的志向。他父亲喜欢医生的高薪，他母亲喜欢医生的地位。但是，当医生总不能靠自学吧，于是他们考虑，该让艾伦去上学了。1918年夏天，图灵夫妇把他送到圣麦克尔私立学校，学习拉丁文。
George Orwell, who was born nine years earlier but likewise to an ICS father, described himself5 as from 'what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle-class.' Before the war, he wrote: you were either a gentleman or not a gentleman, and if you were a gentleman you struggled to behave as such, whatever your income might be. … Probably the distinguishing mark of the upper-middle class was that its traditions were not to any extent commercial, but mainly military, official, and professional. People in this class owned no land, but they felt that they were landowners in the sight of God and kept up a semi-aristocratic outlook by going into the professions and the fighting services rather than into trade. Small boys used to count the plum stones on their plates and foretell their destiny by chanting 'Army, Navy, Church, Medicine, Law'. The Turings were in this position. There was nothing grand about the life of their sons, except perhaps on the few Scottish holidays. Their luxuries were the cinema, the ice rink, and watching the stunt-man dive off the pier on a bicycle. But in the Ward establishment there was an incessant washing away of sins, washing away of smells, to distinguish them from the other children of the town. 'I was very young, not much more than six,' recalled Orwell, 'when I first became aware of class-distinctions. Before that age my chief heroes had generally been working-class people, because they always seemed to do such interesting things, such as being fishermen and blacksmiths and bricklayers. … But it was not long before I was forbidden to play with the plumber's children; they were “common” and I was told to keep away from them. This was snobbish, if you like, but it was also necessary, for middle-class people cannot afford to let their children grow up with vulgar accents.'
比艾伦大9岁的英国作家乔治•奥维尔，曾经自称是「上层中产阶级里的下层人」，他在战前写道：如果你是个绅士，无论你收入多少，都要咬着牙齿去表现得像个绅士。上层中产阶级的特点就是，他们没有商业传统，只崇尚军人，官员或者学者。这个阶级的人，手里没有土地，但却总是自认为，自己是上帝眼中的地主。他们不经商，只从事专业职务或者从军，以此来维持半贵族的形象。男孩们总是数着盘子里的石头，念叨着『陆军，海军，牧师，医生，律师』，用这样的方式，来计划自己的未来。现在，图灵一家就是这么个处境。除了在苏格兰度过的几个假期之外，两个男孩几乎没有什么快乐。他们的奢侈品，就是看电影，溜冰，看杂技。在沃德那里，他们感受到了一种持续不断的清洗，把他们从其他同龄孩子中划分出来。如奥威尔所说：我在很小的时候，还不到6岁，就感受到了阶级划分。本来我很向往工人阶级，因为他们总是在做一些有趣的事，比如渔民、铁匠和瓦匠。但是，我很快就被禁止跟管道工的孩子们一起玩，因为他们是平庸的。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章10:印度公务员
 The Turings could afford very little, since even in the well paid ICS it was always necessary to save for the future. What they had to afford could be summed up in two words: public school. In this respect the war, the inflation, the talk of revolution changed nothing. The Turing boys had to go to public schools, and everything had to be subordinated to this demand. Never, indeed, would Mr Turing allow his sons to forget the debt they owed him for a public school education. Alan's duty was to go through with the system without causing trouble, and in particular to learn Latin, which was required for entrance to a public school.
尽管印度公务员的薪水并不低，但图灵一家的生活并不宽裕，因为他们现在要为将来攒钱，他们必须要为一件事买单，那就是公学。至于战争，革命，通货膨胀，这些似乎都跟他们没关系，两个孩子要上公学，这就是他们唯一关心的事。艾伦现在的主要责任就是别惹祸，次要责任是学拉丁文，这两样事，是上公学的必要条件。
So as Germany collapsed, and the bitter armistice began, Alan was set to work on copy-books and Latin primers. He later told a joke against his own first exercise, in which he translated 'the table' as omit mensa because of the cryptic footnote 'omit' attached to the word 'the'. He was not interested in Latin, and for that matter he had great difficulty in writing. His brain seemed barely coordinated with his hand. A whole decade of fighting with scratchy nibs and leaking fountain-pens was to begin, in which nothing he wrote was free from crossings-out, blots, and irregular script which veered from stilted to depraved.
随着德国的溃败，休战期开始了。艾伦对拉丁文实在是一点兴趣也没有，所以在写作方面遇到了很大困难。他的手和脑似乎无法合作，写作就是跟笔做斗争，这持斗争持续了整整十年。在这期间，凡是他写的东西，要么就是打满了叉，要么就是把纸弄得奇脏。
But at this stage he was still the bright, jolly little boy. On Christmas visits to the Trustram Eves in Earls Court, his uncle Bertie liked making Alan the butt of his practical jokes because of his innocent giggly humour. These occasions were more of a trial for John, who was now considered to be responsible for his younger brother's appearance and behaviour - a responsibility that no human being would ever lightly shoulder. To make matters worse, as John saw it,
但尽管这样，此时的艾伦仍是一个阳光开朗的男孩。在圣诞节去拜访图拉斯坦•伊夫时，他的叔叔伯蒂很喜欢给他讲笑话，因为他总是天真无邪地咯咯傻笑。然而，这样假期对于约翰来说，简直就像恶梦一样，因为他要照顾艾伦，这是一个谁也无法轻松胜任的事。约翰描述道：
he was dressed in sailor suits, according to the convention of the day (they suited him well); I know nothing in the whole range of the cussedness of inanimate objects to compete with a sailor suit. Out of the boxes there erupted collars and ties and neckerchiefs and cummerbunds and oblong pieces of flannel with lengthy tapes attached; but how one put these pieces together, and in what order, was beyond the wit of man. Not that my brother cared a button - an apt phrase, many seemed to be off - for it was all the same thing to him which shoe was on which foot or that it was only three minutes to the fatal breakfast gong. Somehow or another I managed by skimping such trumpery details as Alan's teeth, ears, etc, but I was exhausted by these nursery attentions and it was only when we were taken off to the pantomime that I was able to forget my fraternal cares. Even then Alan was quite a nuisance, complaining loudly of the scene of green dragons and other monsters in 'Where the Rainbow Ends'. …
他穿着水兵服赶时髦，他倒是挺合身，但是我完全不晓得，还有什么东西能比水兵服更难收拾。领子、领带、围巾、腰带、裤子，在箱子外面扔得到处都是，怎么把它们弄整齐，根本就是超出了人类的智力。我弟弟一个扣子都不管，我一点不夸张，他什么东西都不管，哪只脚穿哪只鞋，对他来说根本没有区别。我得帮他处理所有的事，包括刷牙和抠耳朵，这些事让我精疲力竭，只有在我们去看童话剧时，我才能暂时不用为他操心。但就算在这时，艾伦仍然非常烦人，《彩虹尽头》里的绿龙和怪兽一出场，他就开叫大喊大叫……
《艾伦图灵传》第1章11:圣诞童话剧
 The Christmas pantomime was the high spot of the year, although Alan himself later recalled of Christmas 'that as a small child I was quite unable to predict when it would fall, I didn't even realise that it came at regular intervals.' Back at dreary Baston Lodge, his head was buried in maps. He asked for an atlas as a birthday present and pored over it by the hour. He also liked recipes and formulae, and wrote down the ingredients for a dock-leaf concoction for the cure of nettle-stings. The only books he had were little nature-study notebooks, supplemented by his mother reading The Pilgrim's Progress aloud. Once she cheated by leaving out a long theological dissertation, but that made him very cross. 'You spoil the whole thing, ' he shouted, and ran up to his bedroom. Perhaps he was responding to the uncompromising note of Bunyan's plain-speaking Englishman. But once the rules were agreed then they must be followed to the bitter end, without bending or cheating. His Nanny found the same when playing with him.
圣诞童话剧是一年的高潮，但艾伦却不怎么感兴趣。艾伦后来回忆说，小时候我觉得这剧总是没完没了，我不知道它是周期性上演的。后来，他们回到沉闷的巴斯顿住宅，艾伦喜欢上了研究地图。他过生日时，要了一个地图作礼物，并且马上钻研了一遍。他还喜欢药方，把治疗荨麻疹的酸模合剂的成分抄下来。他有一本书，是一小本自然科学笔记，这是他母亲读的《天路历程》的补充资料。有一次，艾赛儿在给他讲书时，偷懒跳过了一篇很长的理论论文，这令艾伦生气地喊叫「你全给搞糟了！」然后跑回了卧室。不管是谁，一旦答应了艾伦的要求，就必须坚持到底，不能变卦也不能骗他。幼儿园的南尼，也发现了这一点，在跟艾伦玩的时候：
The thing that stands out most in my mind was his integrity and his intelligence for a child so young as he then was, also you couldn't camouflage anything from him. I remember one day Alan and I playing together. I played so that he should win, but he spotted it. There was commotion for a few minutes. …
我现在印象最深的就是，他那么小的时候，就表现出一种正直和智慧，你不能跟他耍任何虚伪的东西。我记得有一次跟艾伦一起玩，我故意让他赢，但他马上就指出来，并且吵闹了好长时间……
In February 1919, Mr Turing returned after three years' separation. It was not easy for him to re-establish his authority with Alan, who had a good line in answering back. He told Alan once to untwist his boot-tongues. 'They should be flat as a pancake, ' he said. 'Pancakes are generally rolled up, ' piped back Alan. If Alan had an opinion, he said that he knew, or that he always knew; he always knew that the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden was not an apple but a plum. In the summer, Mr Turing took them for a holiday at Ullapool, in the far north-west of Scotland, this time a distinctly posh holiday, complete with gillie. While Mr Turing and John lured the trout, and Mrs Turing sketched the loch, Alan gambolled in the heather. He had the bright idea of gathering the wild bees' honey for their picnic tea. As the bees buzzed past, he observed their flight-paths and by plotting the intersection point located the nest. The Turings were vividly impressed by this direction-finding, more than by the murky honey he retrieved.
1919年2月，在三年的分离之后，朱利叶斯.图灵先生回来了。然而，现在再想在艾伦面前重建威信，可不是那么容易的，艾伦已经可以轻松地顶嘴了。有一回，朱利叶斯叫他把鞋舌整理好，说鞋舌应该像烙饼一样平。艾伦立即反驳说，烙饼明明是卷的。艾伦如果有什么想法，他会习惯说「我知道」或者是「我早就知道」，比如说，他早就知道伊甸园的禁果不是苹果，而是李子。夏天时，图灵先生带他们到阿勒浦度假。阿勒浦在苏格兰遥远的西北地区。因为有钓鱼教练，所以这次豪华的假期令他们觉得非常愉快。朱利叶斯和约翰在钓鳟鱼，图灵夫人在画海湾的素描，而艾伦则在石楠花丛中自己玩耍。他想了一个收集蜂蜜的好主意，准备在野餐时泡茶。当蜜蜂嗡嗡飞过时，他就在观察它们的飞行路线，并用标出交会点，确定蜂巢的方位。那点脏乎乎的蜂蜜不算什么，但他的这种聪明，给朱利叶斯留下了深刻的印象。
But that December his parents steamed away and Alan was left again with the Wards, while John returned to Hazelhurst. Their father was transferred at last to the metropolis of Madras to serve in the Revenue Department, but Alan stagnated in the deathly ennui of St Leonards-on-Sea, concocting recipes. His development was so held back that he had not even learnt how to do long division by the time of his mothers return in 1921, when he was nearly nine.
这一年的11月，艾伦的父母又走了，他又被留在沃德家，而约翰则回到了海兹赫斯特。图灵先生被调到马德拉斯的一个大城市，做财政工作，艾伦在圣伦纳兹的海边，每天配配无聊的食谱。1921年，当他的母亲再回来时，他已经快要九岁了，但还没有学会比较长的除法。
His mother perceived him as changed from 'extremely vivacious - even mercurial - making friends with everyone' to being 'unsociable and dreamy'. There was a wistful, withdrawn expression in photographs of his ten-year-old face. She took him away from St Leonards and, after a summer holiday in Brittany, somewhat spoilt by the constant counting of francs, she taught him herself in London, where he alarmed her by looking for iron filings in the gutter with a magnet. Mr Turing, who in May 1921 had again been promoted to be Secretary to the Madras Government Development Department, responsible for agriculture and commerce throughout the Presidency, returned once more in December and they all went to St Moritz, where Alan learnt to ski.
他母亲发现，这时的艾伦发生了，从极度活泼，变得不爱交际了。在照片中，他那十岁的小脸庞，甚至还透着强烈的抑郁和孤僻。于是，她带着艾伦离开了圣伦纳兹，在法国西北部的布列塔尼度过暑假之后，他们来到了伦敦，她在那里自己教艾伦。在伦敦，艾伦总是喜欢拿一块磁铁，在下水道里找铁屑玩，这让艾赛尔很操心。1921年5月，朱利叶斯.图灵被提拔为马德拉斯政府发展部副部长，负责农业和商业。12月，他回到英国，全家一起去圣摩瑞兹过冬，艾伦在这里学会了滑雪。
Miss Taylor, the headmistress of St Michael's, had said that Alan 'had genius', but this diagnosis was not allowed to modify the programme. In the new year of 1922, Alan was launched on the next stage of the process and was sent off to Hazelhurst like his brother.
然后，艾伦该去上学了，可是圣迈克尔学校却不要他。女校长泰勒说，艾伦确实挺有天分，但是学校也有学校的制度。这事儿一直拖到1922年新年，艾伦的人生终于走进了新阶段，他跟哥哥一样，来到海兹赫斯特。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章12:小戏或辩论
 Hazelhurst was a small establishment of thirty-six boys of ages from nine to thirteen, run by the headmaster Mr Darlington, a Mr Blenkins who taught mathematics, Miss Gillett who taught drawing and music of a Moodey and Sankey variety, and the Matron. John had loved his time there, and now in his last term was head boy. His younger brother proved to be a thorn in the flesh, for Alan found the Hazelhurst regime a distraction. It 'deprived him of his usual occupations, ' as his mother saw it. Now that the whole day was organised into classes, games and meal-times, he had but odd minutes in which to indulge his interests. He arrived with a craze for paper-folding, and when he had shown the other boys what to do, John found himself confronted everywhere with paper frogs and paper boats. Another humiliation followed when Alan's passion for maps was discovered by Mr Darlington. This inspired him to set a geography test to the whole school, in which Alan came sixth, beating his brother, who found geography very borin g. On another occasion Alan sat in the back row at a school concert, choking himself with laughter while John sang Land of Hope and Glory as a solo.
海兹赫斯特是个小学校，由达灵顿先生开办，布兰金先生教数学，姬丽特小姐教画画和各种类型的音乐。这里一共有36名男孩，都是9到13岁这个年龄段的，约翰很喜欢这里，他现在已经读到最后一学期了，是个好学生。然而，他的弟弟来到这里，却感觉如梗在喉，他觉得那些制度剥夺了他的悠闲生活，简直就要把人逼疯。他现在整天就是上课、参加活动和吃饭，没有时间做自己有兴趣的事了。后来有一阵子，他迷上了折纸，开始教其它男孩折纸，约翰回忆说，他当时看到了铺天盖地的纸青蛙和纸船。艾伦对地图的热爱，启发达灵顿先生举办了一场地理竞赛，艾伦得了第六名，约翰觉得地理很无聊，输给了艾伦。还有一回，学校举行音乐会，当约翰独唱《希望与荣耀的土地》时，艾伦在后排笑得差一点呛到。
John left Hazelhurst at Easter for Marlborough, his public school. In the summer, Mr Turing again took the family to Scotland, this time to Lochinver. Alan exercised his knowledge of maps on the mountain paths, and they fished in the loch, Alan now competing with John. The brothers had a good line in non-violent rivalry, as for instance when they played a game to alleviate the awfulness of their grandfather Stoney's visits. This depended upon winning points by leading him on, or heading him away from one of his well-rehearsed club bore stories. And at Lochinver Alan defeated his family in what Mrs Turing considered the rather vulgar after-dinner sport of throwing discarded gooseberry skins as far as possible. Cleverly inflating them, he made them soar over the hedge.
复活节时，约翰离开了海兹赫斯特，去马尔伯勒上公学。夏天，朱利叶斯先生又带着全家去苏格兰，他们这次去洛金文。艾伦喜欢在山间的小路上实践他的地理知识，另外还跟约翰在湖边比赛钓鱼。这两个兄弟，很喜欢玩一些非暴力的比赛，比如说，为了对付无聊的斯托尼祖父，他们就会玩一个游戏：谁能想办法让他停止讲那些烦人的故事，谁就算获胜。在洛金文，他们进行了一场让图灵夫人觉得十分低俗的比赛，看谁把吃剩的猕猴桃皮扔得更远。艾伦打败了他们家所有的人，他聪明地让猕猴桃皮胀起来，然后把它们高高地抛过树篱。
Life when off duty, in this early afternoon of the Empire, could be very agreeable. But in September his parents saw Alan back to Hazelhurst, and as they drove away in their taxi, Alan rushed back along the school drive with arms flung wide in pursuit. They had to bite their lips and sail away to Madras. Alan continued to maintain is detached view of the Hazelhurst regime. He gained average marks in class, and in turn held an unflattering view of the instruction. Mr Blenkins initiated his class into elementary algebra, and Alan reported to John, 'He gave a quite false impression of what is meant by x.'
艾伦暂时忘记了他的责任和义务，在这里享受着令人惬意的午后阳光。九月份，父母把他送回了海兹赫斯特，当他们乘坐的士离开时，艾伦从学校里冲出来，挥舞着手臂，疯狂地追赶。但是没办法，他们只能咬着嘴唇，搭船回到印度马德拉斯。艾伦对海兹赫斯特的体制，仍然抱有不同的看法，他的平均分慢慢提高了，并且开始对老师的教学提出一些让人尴尬的意见。比如说，当说到教初等数学的布兰金先生时，艾伦对约翰说：「他对未知量x的含义的理解是错的。」
Although he enjoyed the feeble little plays and debates, he hated and feared the gym class and the afternoon games. The boys played hockey in winter, and Alan later claimed that it was the necessity of avoiding the ball that had taught him to run fast. He did enjoy being linesman, judging precisely where the ball had crossed the line. In an end-of-term sing-song, the following couplet described him:
艾伦比较喜欢一些安静的小戏或辩论，他讨厌而且害怕体育课和课后的游戏，比如其它男孩冬天玩的冰球。艾伦后来说过，他为什么擅长奔跑，就是因为当年为了躲冰球而练成的。不过他很喜欢当边线裁判，他喜欢精确地判定球出线的位置。在一次期末活动中，大家评论道：
《艾伦图灵传》第1章13:图灵夫人
 Turing's fond of the football field
图灵为什么喜欢冰球场
For geometric problems the touch-lines yield
因为边线是一道几何题
Later another verse had him 'watching the daisies grow' during hockey, an image which inspired his mother to a whimsical pencil sketch. And although intended as a joke against his dreamy passivity, there might have been a truth in the observation. For something new had happened.
艾伦的母亲，图灵夫人艾赛儿，还想象着这样的场面，画了一幅素描。虽然这只是同学们对他的心不在焉的一种嘲讽，但这句话里确实有一些真实成分，因为在这个时期，有一些新鲜的事情发生了。
At the end of 1922, some unknown benefactor had given him a book, called Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know.8 Alan told his mother later that this book had opened his eyes to science. Indeed, it must have been the first time that he became conscious that such a kind of knowledge as 'science' existed. But more than that, it opened the book of life. If anything at all can be said to have influenced him, it was this book which, like so many new things, came from the United States.
1922年末，不知道是谁送给艾伦一本书，叫《儿童必读的自然奇迹》。他后来告诉母亲，这本书让他大开眼界，让他知道了世界上还存在一种知识，叫作科学。这本书，不仅让他认识到什么是生命，而且也改变了他的生命之路。如果说，有一样东西，曾经改变过图灵，那无疑就是这本来自美国人的书。
The book had first appeared in 1912 and its author, Edwin Tenney Brewster, had described it as … the first attempt to set before young readers some knowledge of certain loosely related but very modern topics, commonly grouped together under the name, General Physiology. It is, in short, an attempt to lead children of eight or ten, first to ask and then to answer, the question: What have I in common with other living things, and how do I differ from them? Incidentally, in addition, I have attempted to provide a foundation on which a perplexed but serious-minded parent can himself base an answer to several puzzling questions which all children ask - most especially to that most difficult of them all: By what process of becoming did I myself finally appear in this world?
这本书出版于1912年，作者埃德文?特尼?布鲁斯特如此描述它：「……这是首次尝试为年轻的读者们讲述生理话题。总之，这是一次尝试，启发孩子们产生这样的疑问：『我和其他生物有什么共性？又有什么区别？』并且给出了回答。另外，孩子们经常会问一些让人为难的问题，其中最难回答的就是：『我是怎么形成的？是怎么来到这个世界的？』在本书中，我也尝试为那些严肃却困惑的家长，提供一些解答这类问题的基本原理。」
《艾伦图灵传》第1章14:布鲁斯特
 In other words, it was about sex and science, starting off with 'How the Chicken got inside the Egg', rambling through 'Some Other Sorts of Eggs' until arriving at 'What Little Boys and Girls are Made Of'. Brewster quoted 'the old nursery rhyme' and said that: It has this much truth in it, that little boys and little girls are far from being alike, and it isn't worth while trying to make either one over into the other.
换句话说，这本书讲到了性科学。它从「鸡怎么进到蛋里」开始谈起，谈到「其他种类的蛋」，直到「男孩和女孩是怎么产生的」。布鲁斯特还说：男孩与女孩确实是有区别的，但不要认为其中一方高于另一方。
The precise nature of this difference was not revealed, and only after a skilful diversion on to the subject of the eggs of starfish and sea-urchins did Brewster eventually arrive back at the human body:
这个区别是什么，布鲁斯特没有细说，他将话题引到了海星和海胆的卵，然回技巧性地回到人体上：
So we are not built like a cement or a wooden house, but like a brick one. We are made of little living bricks. When we grow it is because these living bricks divide into half bricks, and then grow into whole ones again. But how they find out when and where to grow fast, and when and where to grow slowly, and when and where not to grow at all, is precisely what nobody has yet made the smallest beginning at finding out.
所以，我们并不像泥马和木马，而是像用砖头砌成的马。我们是由小砖组成的，我们为什么能长大，就是因为一块砖分裂成两个半块，然后半块又能长成一整块。但是我们现在还搞不清楚，这些砖如何决定自己什么时候长，以及哪里长得快、哪里长得慢、哪里不长。
The process of biological growth was the principal scientific theme of E.T. Brewster's book. Yet science had no explanations, only descriptions. In fact on 1 October 1911, when Alan Turing's 'living bricks' were first dividing and redividing, Professor D'Arcy Thompson was telling the British Association that 'the ultimate problems of biology are as inscrutable as of old.'
生命的成长过程，是这本书里最重要的科学话题，但布鲁斯特并没给出详细的解释，他只是描述了这些现象。有意思的是，就在1911年10月1日，当艾伦?图灵的小砖第一次分裂的时候，生物学家达西?汤姆普森教授向英国学会报告说：生理学的本质问题，就像谜一样不可解。
《艾伦图灵传》第1章15:小婴儿
 But equally inscrutable, Natural Wonders conspicuously failed to describe where the first cell in the human process came from, only dropping the elusive hint that 'the egg itself arose by the splitting of still another cell which, of course, was part of the parent's body.' The secret was left for the 'perplexed but serious-minded parent' to explain. Mrs Turing's way of dealing with the thorny topic was, in fact, highly consonant with Brewster's, for John at least was the recipient at Hazelhurst of a special letter starting with the birds and the bees, and ending with instructions 'not to go off the rails'. Presumably Alan was informed in the same way.
还有一件事，《自然奇迹》也没说清楚，那就是人的第一块砖是从哪来的。它只给出了一个让人不解的暗示，说：「蛋本身也是来自一个细胞的分裂，当然，这是母亲身体的一部分。」这个过程的细节，就要留给那些「严肃而困惑的父母」来解答了。图灵夫人在这个棘手的问题上，也像布鲁斯特一样，采取了隐晦的手法。她给在海兹赫斯特的约翰写了一封信，以鸟和蜜蜂开始，以「不要越轨」结束。可以想见，艾伦应该也是被用同样的方式教育的。
In other ways, however, Natural Wonders was indeed 'very modern', and certainly no little 'nature book'. It conveyed the idea that there had to be a reason for the way things were, and that the reason came not from God but from science. Long passages explained why little boys liked throwing things and little girls liked babies, and derived from the pattern of the living world the ideal of a Daddy to go out to work at the office and a Mama to stay at home. This picture of respectable American life was rather remote from the training of the sons of Indian civil servants, but more relevant to Alan was a picture of the brain:
但是在另一个方面，《自然奇迹》是非常现代的，它绝不是一本简单的自然书。它里面传递了一种思想，那就是任何东西的存在，都是有原因的，而且这种原因源自科学，而非上帝。其中有很长的篇幅，解释了为什么男孩喜欢扔东西，女孩喜欢小婴儿，为什么这个世界的理想模式是父亲去办公室工作，而母亲留在家里。这些美国生活的画面，对于印度公务员的儿子来说，理解起来存在一定的复杂性，但是这里有另外一些内容，与艾伦的生活有直接的关系：
Do you see now why you have to go to school five hours a day, and sit on a hard seat studying still harder lessons, when you would much rather sneak off and go in swimming? It is so that you may build up these thinking spots in your brains. … We begin young, while the brain is still growing. With years and years of work and study, we slowly form the thinking spots over our left ears, which we are to use the rest of our days. When we are grown up, we can no more form new thinking places. …
你知不知道，为什么在你想去游泳的时候，大人却非要让你去上学，在板凳上坐五个小时，学那些讨厌的课程？这是因为，只有这样，才能让你的大脑开始形成思维区……这必须趁大脑还在发育时就开始，通过长时间的学习，慢慢形成以后你都要使用的思维区。当我们长大后，我们的大脑就不能再形成新的思维区了……
So even school was justified by science. The old world of divine authority was reduced to a vague allusion in which Brewster, having described evolution, said that 'why it all happens or what it is all for' was precisely 'one of those things that no fellah can find out.' Brewster's living things were unequivocally machines:
这样一来，连上学的合理性也被科学化了，神权至上的旧世界，现在只剩下了模糊的隐喻。布鲁斯特还谈到了生物进化，他甚至还认为，生物就是一种机器：
For, of course, the body is a machine. It is a vastly complex machine, many, many times more complicated than any machine ever made with hands; but still after all a machine. It has been likened to a steam engine. But that was before we knew as much about the way it works as we know now. It really is a gas engine; like the engine of an automobile, a motor boat, or a flying machine.
身体显然就是一个机器，它非常复杂，比人工制造的机器要复杂许多，但它毕竟还是机器。以前我们不知道它是怎么工作的，以为它就像蒸汽发动机。现在我们已经知道了，它确实是个气体发动机，就像摩托车、摩托船或飞机的发动机一样。