The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh unveiled a memorial at Bletchley Park on Friday to honour those who played a pivotal role in decryption operations during World War II, including celebrated gay codebreaker Alan Turing.
The Buckinghamshire estate, home of the Government Code and Cypher School, provided the setting for war hero Turing, who masterminded the Turing bombe codebreaker, to decrypt enemy code during the war. Bletchley Park has since been restored as a museum.
The Queen met a number of war veterans and relatives of those who served at Bletchley Park or its outstations, including Sir John Dermot Turing, nephew of Turing, who died in 1954.
The monarch emphasised the important role Bletchley Park intelligence operations played in the wartime effort after unveiling the Charles Gurrey-designed stone monument, which includes inscriptions of Morse code.
Sheila Lawn, a veteran of Bletchley Park, said after the ceremony: “It was a very great honour, a great pleasure and the culmination of a great deal of effort to have such a splendid occasion at Bletchley Park with Her Majesty The Queen and His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh present”.
Turing, who was placed 21st in the 2002 BBC poll of 100 Great Britons, was convicted for homosexuality in 1952 and undertook a forced process of hormonal treatment and chemical castration in preference to a prison sentence. In 2009, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologised to Turing’s family for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.
