Turing family hand in petition at Downing Street

The family of Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing - who was played on the big screen by Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game - have been at Downing Street today to demand the Government pardons 49,000 other men persecuted for their homosexuality.

Turing, whose work cracking the German military codes was vital to the British war effort against Nazi Germany, was convicted in 1952 for gross indecency with a 19-year-old man. He was chemically castrated, and two years later died from cyanide poisoning in an apparent suicide.

He was given a posthumous royal pardon in 2013 and campaigners want the Government to pardon all the men convicted under the same outdated law.

Turing's great-nephew, Nevil Hunt, his great-niece, Rachel Barnes, and her son, Thomas, have handed over the petition, which was signed by almost half-a-million people.