Alan Turing is one of Britain’s most prominent war heroes. The code breaker’s work to crack Enigma saved thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of civilians, and his statue in Manchester serves to remind of us his efforts.
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00:00Let's have a talk about some of the statues in Manchester.
00:02Hello and welcome to Manchester World.
00:04I'm Theo Huston-Beck and this is the 4th Park series of explainers
00:07where I'll take a look at some of the most prominent statues in Manchester
00:10and explain a little bit about their history and why they're important to the city.
00:14Today we're going to have a look at the Alan Turing Memorial in Sackville Gardens
00:18which depicts the World War II codebreaker sat on a bench holding an apple.
00:21Sackville Gardens is located in between Manchester's Gay Village and the University of Manchester
00:26both places that Turing is associated with in the city.
00:29Turing was a gay man and was convicted in 1952 of gross indecency
00:32in what is and will be seen as one of the most shameful convictions in British history.
00:36The statue was unveiled on the 23rd of June in 2001
00:39and is representative of the importance that Turing holds to everyone in the city and indeed the country.
00:44It was his cracking of the Enigma machine that helped the Allies to win the war against Germany
00:47and it's he who became the namesake for the Alan Turing Law
00:50which has seen thousands of people retrospectively pardoned for historical offences pertaining to homosexuality.
00:55He's a hero of Manchester, of LGBTQ plus people and of England.