Evidently, according to an article in the Telegraph, J.R.R. Tolkien did some initial training as a Code Breaker at the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School. He ultimately declined a job at Bletchley. Interesting to think of the alternate history of Tolkien working on the Enigma codes with Turing. Excerpt following:
David+
Thanks to Tolkien Studies.
JRR Tolkien trained as British spy The novelist JRR Tolkien secretly trained as a Government spy in the run up to the Second World War, new documents have disclosed. Tolkien, one of his generation's most respected linguists, was ''earmarked'' to crack Nazi codes in the event that Germany declared war. Intelligence chiefs singled him and a 'cadre' of other intellectuals to work at Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire. Its staff - which included Alan Turing, the gay codebreaker - would later decipher the 'impenetrable' Enigma machines. This saved Britain from German conquest by allowing the Navy to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats. According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).So Turing broke “Gay Codes?” I’m not going to even speculate on those....
David+
Thanks to Tolkien Studies.
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