JRR Tolkien trained as British spy

This article is mostly content-free.

"A GCHQ historian, who would not give his name for security reasons, said: ''JRR Tolkien is known the world over for his novels, but his involvement with the war effort may take a few people by surprise.

''While he didn't sign up as was probably intended, he did complete three days' training and was 'keen' to do more.

''Why he failed to join remains a mystery. There is no paperwork suggesting a motive, so we can only assume that he wanted to concentrate on his writing career.''"

So, he didn't do anything more than three days training without further follow up, and that somehow translates in to an involvement with the war effort ?

The only nice bit is near the end, where they relate that a bunch of captured enigma machines are on display but only to the staff of the GCHQ.

Exactly. Gay codes are not that hard to break.

I'm looking forward to the follow-up article about the Manhattan project, featuring "Robert Oppenheimer, the commie bombmaker".

I agree. They might as well have described him as 'Turing, the WW2 scientist who discovered Gaydar.'

I think the Telegraph should be capable of better journalism that this.

1. It wasn't the newspaper that reduced(?) Turing to "The Gay Codebraker". It was the petition campaign before it -- the campaign made him special among other gay (and non-gay) people who were discriminated.

2. If you think, that word "gay" is somehow humiliating -- invent a new euphemism instead of it, for political correctness sake!