
He spent four months in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme but was sidelined after catching trench fever. He left the training camps of England and arrived in France in June 1916. "It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage." Tolkien delayed enlistment until he completed his degree in July 1915, almost a year after Britain entered the First World War. "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly," he said years later in a letter to his son Michael. However, in real life, Tolkien delayed joining the military long enough to draw criticism, especially from relatives.
Christopher tolkien wiki movie#
The movie implies Tolkien and his friends went straight to war. Tolkien readily accept the call to fight for his country? Edith reluctantly agreed to convert to Catholicism at Tolkien's insistence, and the two married on March 22, 1916, just prior to Tolkien going off to war.ĭid J.R.R. He asked her to marry him in January 1913 and she accepted. After they reconnected, Edith broke off her engagement with another man when Tolkien confessed that he still loved her. There is also no evidence that having some friends over to play billiards turned into a moment of rebellion against authority. His school days were dramatized for the movie. Tolkien really impress his peers with his knowledge of Middle English?Ī Tolkien movie fact-check reveals that this scene is likely fictional. It was there that he met fellow orphan Edith Bratt.ĭid a young J.R.R. At age 16, Tolkien moved into a Birmingham boarding house with his brother Hilary. and his brother, making sure they received a good education. Like in the movie, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, a local priest who had been caring for Mabel, assumed legal guardianship of J.R.R. When his mother died of complications from type 1 diabetes in 1904, Tolkien and Hilary were left orphaned. They had first moved in with Mabel's parents in Birmingham and eventually ended up renting Fern Cottage in Rednal. Tolkien, then just three-years-old, lived in near poverty with his mother Mabel and younger brother Hilary.

However, Arthur died of rheumatic fever before he could return to England with the rest of the family.

His English father, Arthur (pictured above), had been sent to manage a branch of a British bank there. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (pronounced Tol-keen) was born in what is now South Africa in 1892.
