Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing

I am excited about this one !!

A trailer has been released for The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing - English mathematician and logician, the father of modern day computing, and the man who cracked the German Enigma code during the war.

Norwegian director Morten Tyldum, known for the crime thriller Headhunters, presents this true story of Turing and his team. In a race against time they work at Britain's top-secret code breaking centre during World War II to break the German Enigma Code. The film spans Turing's life from his unhappy teenage years at boarding school to the triumph of his secret wartime work, to his post-war life where he was the victim of persecution for a now outdated criminal offence.

'The Imitation Game' will be released in New Zealand cinemas on Thursday, January 8th, 2015.

In the meantime check out these books we have on Alan Turing, he was a very interesting man! 

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age






Alan Turing and his Contemporaries: building the world's first computers

Adolf in Blunderland

Adolf in Blunderland: a political parody of Lewis Carroll's famous story by James Dyrenforth and Max Kester

This book. Oh my! It is something that I discovered on our wonderful blog "Treasures from the Basement" and I am so pleased to have stumbled upon it. Auckland Libraries is one of only two libraries that hold this book in New Zealand (the other being Dunedin public library). I have searched online for a copy to purchase but have only been able to find second hand (as it is out of print) copies, with the lowest price being around $60 ! I have seen copies going for more than $100 too - this book is hot property !

It is hilarious and very, very pointed. It is a radio script from a BBC play that was broadcast in October 1939, but the hard copy version of it includes some extra parts that were deemed to be inappropriate by the BBC for airing. It is also a rather disturbing read in light of what occurred in the years following, the devastation of which no one could have predicted

The story follows Alice's adventures, as Adolf encounters the same characters she did, with some slight differences.

Some of my favourites are the Mad Hatter becoming the Mad Flatterer; the Doormouse is the Doormat - representative of the German population(!); the Mock Turtle is Mock Gurbles; the Caterpillar is Neville Chamberlain, allowing Adolf to take his choice of bites out of the mushroom cap in order to make him big again, with the cap resembling a map of the world.

Adolf in Blunderland is a great laugh but it is also chilling to think of the destruction to quickly come, one which the authors could certainly not have predicted.

If you are an Alice fan, or a political cartoon fan, or a history buff, or just enjoy a laugh, you must read this!