Was Tolkien A Spy?

Was Tolkien a spy?

‘JRR Tolkien trained as British spy’ screamed a headline in The Daily Telegraph, reporting on a 2009 exhibition at GCHQ, the British government’s intelligence centre in Gloucestershire.

In fact, Tolkien never became a fully fledged spy, but there is a connection to Bletchley Park, the famous intelligence centre. In the run-up to the Second World War, Tolkien agreed to work for the Foreign Office decoding encrypted messages, and did some initial training. With his experience in signals and communications from the First World War, and his formidable linguistic skills, it is likely he would have ended up working at Bletchley, where academics, mathematicians and early computer wizards such as Alan Turing eventually broke the Nazis’ Enigma code.

For some reason, however, the authorities decided, soon after the war broke out in September 1939, that Tolkien’s services were not required.

Was The Lord Of The Rings dreamed up in a pub?

During his time as an Oxford professor, Tolkien was a member of the Inklings, an informal group that met to share their writings. It started around 1933 and developed around the author CS Lewis and his circle of literary friends. They met in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College and in favourite pubs, like The Eagle And Child.

It was not made up entirely of dons, but included a GP, a retired army major and a lawyer, as well as academics from several disciplines. Over the years it came to include other prominent literary figures, such as the author and editor Charles Williams, and it is said to have influenced the work of WH Auden, who was an undergraduate at the time and later became Tolkien’s friend. Tolkien read much of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit to the group, and these readings became an important part of his creative process.

Did he speak to elves?

Integral to his world of Middle-earth are Tolkien’s invented languages, which his impressive mastery of Old English, Old Norse and several other languages helped him to create. Elvish is the most fully developed one, and was inspired by his youthful discovery of Finnish and Welsh. Many characters and places in the books have Elvish names. It can be studied with the aid of Jim Allan’s An Introduction To Elvish (1978), Ruth S Noel’s The Languages Of Middle-earth (1980), and the glossaries to the volumes of The History Of Middle-earth (1983-96).

The language of mankind, Westron, is represented by English in The Lord Of The Rings, varying the style to reflect its range and diversity.

Where was the real Bag End?

Bilbo Baggins’s comfortable country home, as described in The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, was inspired by the Worcestershire farm of Tolkien’s favourite aunt, Jane Neave, which he visited often. The old, rather dilapidated manor house in Dormston, near Inkberrow, was at the end of a lane, hence its name.

Today, Bag End farm is a private house, still surrounded by fields. Its rural setting provides a tantalising taste of Tolkien’s The Shire.

Just how popular is The Lord Of The Rings?

The idea of writing a sequel to Tolkien’s popular children’s story The Hobbit came from his publisher, Stanley Unwin of George Allen and Unwin, who wished to follow up on the commercial success of the book.

The new story gradually shifted to being aimed at an adult readership. Tolkien produced a reasonably complete draft of The Lord Of The Rings by 1949, almost 12 years after starting work on it. The first two volumes – The Fellowship Of The Ring and The Two Towers – would not be published until a further five years later, with The Return Of The King appearing the following year, in 1955.

One reason for the long delay between completion and publication was Tolkien’s perfectionism; he constantly tinkered with the complex text. Another was that Tolkien wished to complete and publish The Silmarillion together with The Lord Of The Rings, as the former explained the history of Middle-earth prior to the events in the latter. Although usually supportive, Unwin quite reasonably declined publishing The Silmarillion, so Tolkien sent the typescripts of both titles to another publisher, William Collins. When they refused to publish both, he returned repentantly to Unwin with just The Lord Of The Rings.

Because of its length, Unwin decided to publish the work as a hardback in three parts. Production estimates showed that The Lord Of The Rings would make a loss. As a result, Tolkien signed a contract with George Allen and Unwin that specifi ed a share in any profi ts, rather than the usual percentage royalty on sales.

As it turned out, Tolkien was to earn vastly more than if he had received the usual royalty payments. Until 2007, the estimated sales of The Lord Of The Rings in all languages were around 150 million copies (counting three-volume editions as one unit).

Could Tolkien Act?

Although Tolkien did not care for drama, he nevertheless possessed a talent for acting. As a schoolboy, he had performed in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals, and he wrote and performed in a short play as Christmas entertainment at the home of relatives. In later years, when lecturing on Beowulf, he was known to open his presentations with a dramatic recital from the Old English text.

In the summers of 1938 and 1939, Tolkien performed in full dress as Geoffrey Chaucer, reciting stories from The Canterbury Tales from memory, as part of the Summer Diversions organised by Nevill Coghill and John Masefi eld. Tolkien was greatly inspired by Chaucer’s storytelling and his use of northern dialect in the bawdy The Reeve’s Tale.

What Inspired Golem's Riddle Contest?

A dramatic sequence in The Hobbit is the life-anddeath exchange of riddles between Bilbo Baggins and Gollum. The riddles draw on an important feature of Old English and Old Norse poetry, that would have been familiar to Tolkien. One repository of riddles is the Old English Exeter Book, which has more than 90, on various subjects, both secular and religious. It is probable that they were written down in the 8th century AD and refl ect the culture of England before the Norman Conquest, just as those bandied between Bilbo and Gollum reflect Hobbit life.

What Does His Headstone Read?

JRR Tolkien and his wife Edith are buried together in Wolvercote cemetery, north Oxford, where the headstone carries the names ‘Beren’ and ‘Lúthien’ as an identifying inscription. Tolkien associated his love for Edith with his story of Beren and Lúthien: Beren first encounters Lúthien dancing at moonrise in a forest.

While Tolkien was convalescing from the trauma of the Somme, Edith had danced for him in a Yorkshire woodland clearing.

Amazing And Extraordinary Facts: JRR Tolkien, by Colin Duriez, is published by David and Charles, priced £9.99.