{"id":1068,"date":"2020-11-23T17:28:55","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T17:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/?page_id=1068"},"modified":"2026-03-14T23:21:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T23:21:26","slug":"tolkien","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/tolkien\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien"},"content":{"rendered":"

For The Silhillian<\/em>, 2020:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Tolkiens of Solihull School<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> and The Hobbit<\/em> attended King Edward\u2019s in Birmingham, but there is also a strong connection between the Tolkien family and Solihull School.\u00a0 When I interviewed John Jammes for the Silhillian<\/em> last year he praised his former colleague Michael Tolkien, a delightful man with beautiful handwriting (\u2018It was a joy to follow him in the classroom\u2019) who was, like John, modest about his war service and a much-admired and talented teacher.\u00a0 And Michael\u2019s son (also called Michael) was a pupil at Solihull.\u00a0 I then learnt that Arthur Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s father, was a pupil at Solihull School too.<\/p>\n

Just a few months before he died in 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien had written some lovely letters to an Old Silhillian (copies are in the Old Silhillians Association archive online), in which he mentioned the Tolkien family\u2019s connections with the school, noting that his father was at Solihull a hundred years ago or more, before moving to King Edward\u2019s.\u00a0 Born in 1857, Arthur Tolkien was eleven when, on 26 June 1868, The Coventry Standard<\/em> reported that in the annual public examinations at Solihull Grammar School (as it then was), a Tolkien won second prize for Divinity, and third prize for Arithmetic and Mathematics, and was commended for his performance in Latin.\u00a0 The Rev. James Hatchard Bennett was headmaster at that time, when it was a small school in its old building near the parish church (Solihull was not entirely unlike Tolkien\u2019s fictional Hobbiton in those days).\u00a0 Arthur Tolkien died in Bloemfontein in 1896, when John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was only four, and the family moved to Sarehole, Hall Green, until 1900.<\/p>\n

Sarehole, which would have a significant influence on Tolkien\u2019s work, is less than five miles from Solihull School, but it was 1956 when the school returned to the Tolkien story, as Michael Tolkien (born in Oxford in 1920) became a Latin master at Solihull for two years.\u00a0 This was a move to the world of his father\u2019s (and grandfather\u2019s) childhood, but his wife Joan also had family in the area.\u00a0 The Shenstonian<\/em> noted that M.H.R. Tolkien \u2018quickly made his mark by his quiet and clear teaching\u2019.\u00a0 It noted his involvement with rugby too, and he was actively involved in the debating society.\u00a0 He took a strong interest in history and politics \u2013 for instance, on one occasion he gave a talk at the school on \u2018Communism and Christianity\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Shenstonian<\/em> also mentioned that \u2018he has devoted himself to the interests of the Roman Catholics\u2019.\u00a0 He came to Solihull from the Catholic school, the Oratory, near Reading, where he had been a pupil, and his brother was a Catholic priest in Sparkhill, Birmingham, at the time.\u00a0 He took an interest in a number of Catholic writers, and one of his favourites seems to have been Hilaire Belloc, a fellow Old Oratorian.\u00a0 Michael would later teach at the Catholic schools Ampleforth and Stonyhurst before he died (when only 63) in 1984.<\/p>\n

Clearly, his war years were also a significant part of his life and they had a lasting effect on him.\u00a0 He was still young when the war began, but joined up after a year studying History at Oxford and served in a number of different roles.\u00a0 During the war he also got married, against his parents\u2019 wishes, and became a father.\u00a0 In 1957, he told the school\u2019s \u2018Le Cercle Fran\u00e7ais\u2019 about his war experiences, especially a \u2018raid en Normandie\u2019.\u00a0 He was involved in the 1942 Dieppe Raid but was invalided out of the army in 1943.\u00a0 His father recorded that his son was involved in dangerous \u2018commando\u2019 work and that he suffered from shell-shock.<\/p>\n

Michael did recommend his father\u2019s work to his pupils at Solihull, but it\u2019s surprising though to see from a library report in 1957 that J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s books were not enjoyed by everyone:<\/p>\n

Among the Books of the Week this term have been The Outsider, by Colin Wilson, The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, and The Story of Art, by E. H. Gombrich.\u00a0 I should like to thank their reviewers for the time which they have spent in reading them.\u00a0 Unfortunately the books do not seem to have been so popular this term.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, The Lord of the Rings<\/em>, which had recently been published in three volumes (1954-5), became, like The Hobbit<\/em>, one of the most popular books ever written.\u00a0 Another great writer, and one from Solihull (but not Solihull School), W.H. Auden, noted in 1956 that Tolkien had a \u2018growing army of fans\u2019, one that kept on growing through the rest of J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s life.\u00a0 Roverandum<\/em>, a book that was written for Michael, was published posthumously in 1998.<\/p>\n

The younger Michael Tolkien, M.G.R. Tolkien, who was born in Birmingham in 1943, enjoyed his two years at Solihull, where he excelled at athletics, and won a prize for Classics.\u00a0 He told me that he liked the broad social spectrum of students, and the degree of tolerance for the individual and even the eccentric.\u00a0 He recalls several excellent teachers, including J.F. Way, R.H. Thomas, H.A. Fisher and A.L. Mackenzie.\u00a0 Now retired, he taught English at Uppingham, and he is a poet who has written several books (see his website www.michaeltolkien.com<\/a>, which also includes lectures about his grandfather).<\/p>\n

In 1963, a letter to the Shenstonian<\/em> from St Andrews University reported that M.G.R. Tolkien had arrived at the university to read English: \u2018Though Michael spent only two years at Solihull he is usually to be seen wearing the School scarf.\u2019\u00a0 He explained to me that he was fond of the Solihull School scarf that was knitted for him by his maternal grandmother, who lived in Acocks Green, and he found it rather useful at university on the chilly Scottish coast.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know whether he still has the scarf but he certainly still has fond and vivid memories of his happy years at Solihull School: \u2018many lasting thoughts come back from some really amusing and warm friendships, nourished by the advantages of our being day pupils with a lot of \u201coutside\u201d life to share\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For The Silhillian, 2020:   The Tolkiens of Solihull School \u00a0 It is well known that J.R.R. Tolkien of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit attended King Edward\u2019s in Birmingham, but there is also a strong connection between the Tolkien family and Solihull School.\u00a0 When I interviewed John Jammes for the Silhillian last … <\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1068","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1068\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/guycuthbertson.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}