[4] He was about to begin secondary education at Glendale County School, Wood Green, in 1939, when the outbreak of World War II intervened.

At the NPL in 1952 he was able to become an operator of an early version of the Automatic Computing Engine: the Pilot ACE project supported by Harry Huskey's prototype assembler.

[4][5] Returning to academia, Routledge became a research Fellow in mathematics at King's College, Cambridge.

[6] In 1959, Robert Birley, Headmaster at Eton College, asked Routledge for a recommendation of some promising student for a mathematics teaching post; and he suggested himself.

After his arrest and before his trial, he sent the following cryptic syllogism to Routledge in 1952:[11][12][13][14] Turing believes that machines thinkTuring lies with menTherefore machines cannot thinkThe 1992 documentary programme The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing had Routledge as one of the interviewees.