Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien secretly trained as a spy, it was revealed Wednesday.
British intelligence chiefs chose Tolkien — one of the top language experts of his generation — for a job cracking Nazi codes in 1939.
Tolkien, an Oxford University professor who died in 1973, was one of 50 intellectuals specially chosen for secret training.
The story is revealed in newly-released documents being exhibited at GCHQ — Britain’s modern spy center in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, west of London.
The word “keen” is written on Tolkien’s training file, and historians think he was a code-breaking whiz, easily passing the training course at the Government Code and Cypher School, the old name for the GCHQ.
But Tolkien rejected the offer of a job at the famous Bletchley Park code-breaking center on a salary of £500 (about $826) — equivalent to about £50,000 (about $82,600) today. (Codebreakers who took the job would later break the so-called “impenetrable” Enigma machines – a breakthrough that ultimately saved the UK from German conquest, because the Navy could intercept and destroy Hitler’s U-boats.)
A GCHQ historian – who could not give his name because of security reasons – joked to the UK’s The Telegraph: “We simply don’t know why he didn’t join. Perhaps it was because we declared war on Germany and not Mordor.”
Tolkien – full name John Ronald Reuel – trained in March 1939, six months before World War II broke out, and just 18 months after he published The Hobbit, his first book.
Unfortunately for Lord of the Rings fans hoping to make a pilgrimage to the museum, the Enigma exhibit at the GCHQ is nearly as top secret as the code-breaking work: It’s only open to headquarters’ employees.
Photo courtesy daughter of chaucer via Flickr.