THE IMITATION GAME is a compelling and important film - superbly acted - and no doubt championed by Harvey Weinstein for major awards. It tells the story of the English mathematician Alan Turing - a prodigious talent who was instrumental in cracking the German cryptography machine, Enigma, thus shortening World War Two and saving millions of lives. The tragedy of his story is that this socially awkward man lived a life of isolation and worse still secrecy: he was a homosexual at a time when to admit such a thing meant prison and ostracisation. Turing could either work or be honest: an horrific and impossible choice. In the end, when an ungrateful country condemned him for indecency - condemned him to chemical castration, Turing committed suicide. He was only 41. And it was only last year that the government finally apologised.
