09-16-2009, 11:27 PM | #1 |
Salt Miner
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: gone to Far Harad
Posts: 987
|
JRR Tolkien trained as British spy
London Telegraph, dateline 16 Sept 2009:
|
09-17-2009, 06:45 AM | #2 |
The Chocoholic Sea Elf Administrator
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: N?n in Eilph (Belgium)
Posts: 14,363
|
Interesting tidbit.
It's funny, but my first thought when I read that they didn't know why Tolkien declined the job, was that Tolkien probably didn't fancy working with the machinery that would be necessary for the job.
__________________
We are not things. |
09-18-2009, 05:39 AM | #3 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
|
As it turned out, a further memo shows that Tolkien in fact did serve as an intelligence officer. In nineteen-forty he was asked to translate a message concerning German troop movements during the preparations for the impending occupation of Norway in spring of that year.
He completed the task in nineteen forty-six, complete with a 300 page footnote on the linguistic differences between German and Old Norwegian as revealed in alliteration patterns found in the Skjoldunga Saga
__________________
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
09-18-2009, 08:12 PM | #4 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: sikeston, MO, usa, earth, sol
Posts: 3,114
|
Hmmm, perhaps the notation means TOLL-keen as an aid to pronunciation and has nothing to do with JRRT's enthusiasm. Although I do note that the 300 page footnote to the translated message ought to be published and could be evidence that he was TO(L)TALLY KEEN on languages and a scholar of the first rank of footnoting.
__________________
Inked "Aslan is not a tame lion." CSL/LWW "The new school [acts] as if it required...courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that requires real courage to say, and that is a truism." GK Chesterton "And there is always the danger of allowing people to suppose that our modern times are so wholly unlike any other times that the fundamental facts about man's nature have wholly changed with changing circumstances." Dorothy L. Sayers, 1 Sept. 1941 |
10-08-2009, 12:13 PM | #5 |
Hobbit
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Hobbiton, New Jersey
Posts: 35
|
I've actually read that several big names in Hollywood around the time of the Cold War were approached to be CIA spies as well.
|
10-10-2009, 10:07 AM | #6 | |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
|
Quote:
__________________
Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
|
10-10-2009, 08:24 PM | #7 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
|
Well, JRR was noted for being pretty slow...thorough, but sllooowwww.
__________________
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
10-10-2009, 11:42 PM | #8 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
|
Oh, certainly, he would have finished it in 1946. But Chrissie boy is the one with the talent for using whole forests of trees to make something interesting into an utter bore.
__________________
Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
10-11-2009, 03:27 AM | #9 | |
Salt Miner
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: gone to Far Harad
Posts: 987
|
There is actually a footnote on this in Letters of JRR Tolkien for Letter 35. The letter is on pp 41-43; the footnote is on p 436. It contains most of the pertinent information in the Telegraph article.
Quote:
It is also worth noting that the screaming headline, “Tolkien trained as a spy”, does not match the facts as laid out by Carter and CJR Tolkien. Tolkien seems to have begun training as a code-breaker. Had he continued in this, he would presumably have been sent to Bletchley Park, where Alan Turing led an assortment of geniuses, using work pioneered by the Poles and including a prototype Enigma machine constructed by Polish intelligence and smuggled to England at the beginning of hostilities in 1939, and broke the Enigma code. The people working on this included chess masters and people who could solve the Sunday Times crossword with relative ease, as well as mathematicians like Turing, linguists, interpreters, and so forth. Tolkien was surely recruited for his linguistic and philological skills, which were his profession and for which he was rightly esteemed: he was at the time Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at University of Oxford, and in 1945 became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. The article says that Tolkien “declined a £500-a-year offer to become a full-time recruit.” This does not agree with what Carter wrote, that “he was informed that his services would not be required for the present”. Perhaps code-breaking is like stock trading: no matter how smart you are, how well-trained you are, and what your skill-set may be going into it, you are either born a trader or not. Some people can trade, and some people can’t. Perhaps some folks can break codes, and some can’t. GrayMouser may be on the right trail. By the way, Tolkien is remarkably open about this in the aforementioned letter, written 2 February 1939 to Mr. C.A. Furth at his publishers, Allen & Unwin. He told Furth he had “some work in preparation for a ‘National Emergency’ (which will take a week out.) I have to go to Scotland either in March or April.” His training, according to the Telegraph article, was in London; presumably, his trip to Scotland was on other business. Last edited by Alcuin : 10-11-2009 at 03:30 AM. |
|
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Research paper on Tolkien | The Telcontarion | Writer's Workshop | 10 | 12-16-2007 12:04 PM |
Whats on your Bookshelf? | hectorberlioz | General Literature | 135 | 02-12-2007 07:26 PM |
My 10Kth post - Tolkien and a California Girl | Rían | General Messages | 52 | 11-12-2005 10:38 PM |
The Sundering of the Tolkien Fans | Black Breathalizer | Lord of the Rings Movies | 55 | 01-22-2003 01:27 PM |
a little orientation needed | DrFledermaus | The Silmarillion | 9 | 02-12-2001 05:48 AM |