Breaking the Code at Salisbury Playhouse

Patrick Francis, former Head of History and whose new History of Sherborne School, Old Yet Ever Young, is due to be published next year gives a brilliant review of the theatre production of Breaking the Code, at Salisbury Playhouse...

An outstanding production of Breaking the Code is on at Salisbury Playhouse until October 26th. The cast includes Hubert Burton (Lyon 2004-09) as Turing’s best friend in his schooldays at Sherborne, Christopher Morcom. By coincidence, Christopher, who was himself a very gifted mathematician, was also in Lyon House until his very premature death from tuberculosis at the age of 18 in 1930. A few months earlier he had been awarded a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge. Alan Turing never got over the early death of his young friend and years later he gave the name ‘Christopher’ to his code-breaking machine at Bletchley Park. In the current production at Salisbury, Edward Bennett gives a very fine performance in the demanding lead role, in which he succeeds in conveying both the academic brilliance and social naivety of Alan Turing. Extraordinarily, one of Edward’s relatives, his great-uncle John Noel Patch Bennett, was an exact contemporary of Turing in Westcott House. Tragically, ‘Patch’ died from exposure on a winter trek in a remote area of Canada towards the end of 1930 just a few months after leaving school.

Any Old Shirburnians able to attend the production will also relish the opening soundscape which features a superb rendition of the School Carmen.