Tolkien the spy?
16 Sep, 2009
2009-9-16 7:11:29 AM UTC
2009-9-16 7:11:29 AM UTC
"GCHQ museum in Cheltenham shows JRR Tolkiien was possible candidate to work at Bletchley Park"
http://tinyurl.com/p8wbu5
- wellinghall
http://tinyurl.com/p8wbu5
- wellinghall
I found this really interesting to read - it does make sense that someone with such a deep understanding and training in languages could be useful for code and cipher work. It would also make sense that Tolkien would want to help out in the war effort in some way at home.
I am a little far away from my library at the moment - is this the first evidence of this? Did it get mentioned at all in Wayne and Christina's works?
I am a little far away from my library at the moment - is this the first evidence of this? Did it get mentioned at all in Wayne and Christina's works?
See our J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, pp. 224 (January 1939, Tolkien agrees to work in the cryptography department of the Foreign Office in the event of war), 226 (27 March 1939, Tolkien begins a four-day training course), 232 (October 1939, Tolkien is informed that he will not be required to work as a cryptographer). See also Letters, note for letter 35, p. 436.
Wayne & Christina
Wayne & Christina
Wayne, thanks for this. Unfortunately, most of our boxes are still buried by the detritus of moving house, so I couldn't check these references for myself; and the exhibition appears to be for GCHQ staff only, and I no longer know anyone working there, so I can't check the exhibits for myself.
- wellinghall
- wellinghall
I notice this bit in the Telegraph version of the article (http://bit.ly/m818w): "A record of [Tolkien's] training carries the word ''keen'' beside his name." This leads the GCHQ historian to remark that ''While he didn't sign up as was probably intended, he did complete three days' training and was 'keen' to do more." I think it plain that "keen" was written only to indicate the pronunciation of "Tolkien" (distinguishing it from "kine")....
Well, we can't expect reporters to actually do research on their subject, can we, W&C? ;)
With an article like this, it's impossible to know if the historian actually gave out this information, or was misunderstood and misquoted by the reporter. Perhaps both!
Readers here who don't also follow the Mythopoeic Society list may be interested in our answer to a question raised by the article: Did Tolkien in fact turn down the cryptography job, or was it that Tolkien wasn't needed for it? We wrote:
The latter seems to be the case -- that is, not yet needed -- according to Carpenter's note in Letters (p. 436), presumably based on materials in Tolkien's private papers (to which we ourselves did not have access), and this is supported by comments Tolkien made in letters to Allen & Unwin on 15 September and 19 December 1939. For some months after the training course in March that year -- we call it a "training course" in our Chronology (p. 226), Carpenter calls it a "course of instruction", the Telegraph article calls it a "tester", presumably it was all an aptitude test of some sort -- Tolkien assumed that he could be called into service by the Foreign Office at any time. He wrote as much to Philip Unwin on 15 September (we passed over the particular remark in our Chronology summary), to the effect that he had agreed to the job in the spring, was not yet summoned to it, but it was an open obligation -- Britain was now at war -- and once he was engaged with it, he did not know how much time it would allow him to devote to outside work. Then on 19 December he wrote to Stanley Unwin (see Letters, p. 44) that he was "uncommandeered still myself, and shall now probably remain so, as there is (as yet) far too much to do here [in the Oxford English School], and I have lost both my chief assistant and his understudy". In the same letter, Tolkien comments on his accident "just before the outbreak of war", on his wife's illness, and that he was now the virtual head of his department, all of which would have been good reasons for the Foreign Office not to call him to work in cryptography at that time -- assuming that he was suited to that work in the first place. His words, at least, give no indication that he turned down a position, but rather that it was a case of what Carpenter says in his note, that Tolkien was informed that "his services would not be required for the present".
The Telegraph article, which followed on a similar one on the This Is Gloucestershire website a day earlier, is frankly a mess. Even had Tolkien gone to work in cryptography, he would not have been a "spy" as the headline has it. Nor was he necessarily "'earmarked' to crack Nazi codes" -- some of the personnel at Bletchley Park were there as language, not cipher, specialists. Its staff were already, before 1939, reading messages enciphered on Enigmas -- the commercial variety if not the more difficult German army and navy Enigmas. The Royal Navy did not exactly use the secret German traffic "to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats", as doing so would have given away the fact that Enigma was not impenetrable. The Lord of the Rings is not, of course, a trilogy -- and we could go on. We agree with our friend Aelfwine, on the Tolkien Collector's Guide website a few days ago, that the notation "keen" beside Tolkien's name on one of the official papers very likely refers to the pronunciation of Tolkien's surname, as opposed to "kine". Tolkien's connection with this part of the war effort was not "revealed for the first time" in the GCHQ exhibition, since it was mentioned in Letters and our Companion and Guide. The GCHQ historian makes the unwarranted assumption that Tolkien "failed to join" because "he wanted to concentrate on his writing career", and the rather silly remark that "perhaps it was because we declared war on Germany and not Mordor"; and then the reporter carries on in the same vein, with statements such as "the director of GCCS, known only as 'Alastair G. Denniston'", as if Alastair Denniston were an unknown figure, when in fact he is well known in the history of British cryptanalysis.
Wayne and Christina
With an article like this, it's impossible to know if the historian actually gave out this information, or was misunderstood and misquoted by the reporter. Perhaps both!
Readers here who don't also follow the Mythopoeic Society list may be interested in our answer to a question raised by the article: Did Tolkien in fact turn down the cryptography job, or was it that Tolkien wasn't needed for it? We wrote:
The latter seems to be the case -- that is, not yet needed -- according to Carpenter's note in Letters (p. 436), presumably based on materials in Tolkien's private papers (to which we ourselves did not have access), and this is supported by comments Tolkien made in letters to Allen & Unwin on 15 September and 19 December 1939. For some months after the training course in March that year -- we call it a "training course" in our Chronology (p. 226), Carpenter calls it a "course of instruction", the Telegraph article calls it a "tester", presumably it was all an aptitude test of some sort -- Tolkien assumed that he could be called into service by the Foreign Office at any time. He wrote as much to Philip Unwin on 15 September (we passed over the particular remark in our Chronology summary), to the effect that he had agreed to the job in the spring, was not yet summoned to it, but it was an open obligation -- Britain was now at war -- and once he was engaged with it, he did not know how much time it would allow him to devote to outside work. Then on 19 December he wrote to Stanley Unwin (see Letters, p. 44) that he was "uncommandeered still myself, and shall now probably remain so, as there is (as yet) far too much to do here [in the Oxford English School], and I have lost both my chief assistant and his understudy". In the same letter, Tolkien comments on his accident "just before the outbreak of war", on his wife's illness, and that he was now the virtual head of his department, all of which would have been good reasons for the Foreign Office not to call him to work in cryptography at that time -- assuming that he was suited to that work in the first place. His words, at least, give no indication that he turned down a position, but rather that it was a case of what Carpenter says in his note, that Tolkien was informed that "his services would not be required for the present".
The Telegraph article, which followed on a similar one on the This Is Gloucestershire website a day earlier, is frankly a mess. Even had Tolkien gone to work in cryptography, he would not have been a "spy" as the headline has it. Nor was he necessarily "'earmarked' to crack Nazi codes" -- some of the personnel at Bletchley Park were there as language, not cipher, specialists. Its staff were already, before 1939, reading messages enciphered on Enigmas -- the commercial variety if not the more difficult German army and navy Enigmas. The Royal Navy did not exactly use the secret German traffic "to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats", as doing so would have given away the fact that Enigma was not impenetrable. The Lord of the Rings is not, of course, a trilogy -- and we could go on. We agree with our friend Aelfwine, on the Tolkien Collector's Guide website a few days ago, that the notation "keen" beside Tolkien's name on one of the official papers very likely refers to the pronunciation of Tolkien's surname, as opposed to "kine". Tolkien's connection with this part of the war effort was not "revealed for the first time" in the GCHQ exhibition, since it was mentioned in Letters and our Companion and Guide. The GCHQ historian makes the unwarranted assumption that Tolkien "failed to join" because "he wanted to concentrate on his writing career", and the rather silly remark that "perhaps it was because we declared war on Germany and not Mordor"; and then the reporter carries on in the same vein, with statements such as "the director of GCCS, known only as 'Alastair G. Denniston'", as if Alastair Denniston were an unknown figure, when in fact he is well known in the history of British cryptanalysis.
Wayne and Christina
Findegil wrote:
The Royal Navy did not exactly use the secret German traffic "to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats", as doing so would have given away the fact that Enigma was not impenetrable.
Did Bletchley Park use the deciphered traffic "to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats"?
On the whole no, they used it primarily to make sure that convoys went around the areas where the U-Boats were waiting.
Later in the in the war the information from Bletchley Park was shared with the US and both the Royal Navy and US Navy sank all the German refueling vessels for U-Boats.
The Germans never believed that the ciphers had been broken, but that copies of the codebooks had been obtained and every time they got suspicious they changed the codes that were used.
If you are interested in this area, then I recommend "Enigma" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, who had a special interest in Bletchley Park as it was his families ancestral home.
Andrew
If you are interested in this area, then I recommend "Enigma" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, who had a special interest in Bletchley Park as it was his families ancestral home.
A good book, we referred to it when writing our post. Also on our shelves is Seizing the Enigma by David Kahn (1991).
Wayne and Christina
A good book, we referred to it when writing our post. Also on our shelves is Seizing the Enigma by David Kahn (1991).
Wayne and Christina
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