Information for Breaking the Code at Royal & Derngate, Northampton (Play). Based on the book Alan Turing: The Enigma by Alan Hodges This powerful and evocative historical drama explores the life of the man who broke too many codes: his major role in breaking the complex Enigma code in World War II and his conviction for homosexuality, the sentence for which left him mentally and physically debilitated. Now regarded as the father of modern computers, or Turing machines, he committed suicide in 1954, aged only 41, forgotten and alone. This is about who he was, what happened to him and why.