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.
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