雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第1章9:紳士

Alan taught himself to read in about three weeks from a book called Reading without Tears. He was quicker, however, to recognise figures, and had an infuriating habit of stopping at every lamp post to identify its serial number. He was one of those many people without a natural sense of left and right, and he made a little red spot on his left thumb, which he called 'the knowing spot'.

艾倫通過一本《快樂閱讀》，用三週時間學會了閱讀，他還用更短的時間學會了識數，並且養成了一個煩人的習慣：每次走過路燈時，都要停下來看上面的編號。但是，艾倫分不清楚左右，他在左手的拇指上畫了一個紅點，稱爲「識別點」，通過它，來判斷哪邊是左。

He would say that he wanted to be a doctor when he grew up – an ambition that would have been agreeable to the Turings, for his father would approve of the fees, and his mother of the distinguished clients and the practice of good works. But he could not learn to be a doctor on his own. It was time for some education. And so in the summer of 1918 Mrs Turing sent him to a private day school called St Michael's, to learn Latin.

艾倫的理想，是當一名醫生，這是一個令家人很高興的志向。他父親喜歡醫生的高薪，他母親喜歡醫生的地位。但是，當醫生總不能靠自學吧，於是他們考慮，該讓艾倫去上學了。1918年夏天，圖靈夫婦把他送到聖麥克爾私立學校，學習拉丁文。

George Orwell, who was born nine years earlier but likewise to an ICS father, described himself5 as from 'what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle-class.' Before the war, he wrote: you were either a gentleman or not a gentleman, and if you were a gentleman you struggled to behave as such, whatever your income might be. … Probably the distinguishing mark of the upper-middle class was that its traditions were not to any extent commercial, but mainly military, official, and professional. People in this class owned no land, but they felt that they were landowners in the sight of God and kept up a semi-aristocratic outlook by going into the professions and the fighting services rather than into trade. Small boys used to count the plum stones on their plates and foretell their destiny by chanting 'Army, Navy, Church, Medicine, Law'. The Turings were in this position. There was nothing grand about the life of their sons, except perhaps on the few Scottish holidays. Their luxuries were the cinema, the ice rink, and watching the stunt-man dive off the pier on a bicycle. But in the Ward establishment there was an incessant washing away of sins, washing away of smells, to distinguish them from the other children of the town. 'I was very young, not much more than six,' recalled Orwell, 'when I first became aware of class-distinctions. Before that age my chief heroes had generally been working-class people, because they always seemed to do such interesting things, such as being fishermen and blacksmiths and bricklayers. … But it was not long before I was forbidden to play with the plumber's children; they were “common” and I was told to keep away from them. This was snobbish, if you like, but it was also necessary, for middle-class people cannot afford to let their children grow up with vulgar accents.'

比艾倫大9歲的英國作家喬治·奧維爾，曾經自稱是「上層中產階級裏的下層人」，他在戰前寫道：如果你是個紳士，無論你收入多少，都要咬着牙齒去表現得像個紳士。上層中產階級的特點就是，他們沒有商業傳統，只崇尚軍人，官員或者學者。這個階級的人，手裏沒有土地，但卻總是自認爲，自己是上帝眼中的地主。他們不經商，只從事專業職務或者從軍，以此來維持半貴族的形象。男孩們總是數着盤子裏的石頭，唸叨着『陸軍，海軍，牧師，醫生，律師』，用這樣的方式，來計劃自己的未來。現在，圖靈一家就是這麼個處境。除了在蘇格蘭度過的幾個假期之外，兩個男孩幾乎沒有什麼快樂。他們的奢侈品，就是看電影，溜冰，看雜技。在沃德那裏，他們感受到了一種持續不斷的清洗，把他們從其他同齡孩子中劃分出來。如奧威爾所說：我在很小的時候，還不到6歲，就感受到了階級劃分。本來我很嚮往工人階級，因爲他們總是在做一些有趣的事，比如漁民、鐵匠和瓦匠。但是，我很快就被禁止跟管道工的孩子們一起玩，因爲他們是平庸的。