azdak

I'm about halfway through the Turing book now, and am charmed by Hodge's assumption (quite correct, in my case) that every detail of Turing's life is of abosrbing interest. Thus I know now that while he was at Bletchley, one of the books Turing read was The Mind of the Maker, by a certain Dorothy L. Sayers. Hodges doesn't say so explicitly, but surely we can draw the inference that Turing was a Peter Wimsey fan? I like the man more by the minute!

I'm also glad to report that Hodges deals with the maths admirably, so that while, obviously, I don't actually understand it, I do get a feel for the problems in general terms, and how Turing's approach was innovative. I've actually come across quite a lot of the problems before (Y halo thar, zeta-function!) in popular science books, and Hodges' handling compares very favourably with other "explanations" out there. I was glad, though, that I'd read Simon Singh's The Code Book beforehand, because otherwise I would definitely have struggled with the chapters on Enigma.