Dreaming of Counties: How East Yorkshire Shaped Tolkien's Middle-earth Fantasy
Trench fever. I used to imagine it sounding like the flu, or even Covid, but it's in some ways a meaner disease. Caused by bacteria carried by lice, its symptoms include high temperature, headaches and excruciating pain in the legs and back. And although the symptoms fade after a few days, the Bartonella quintana bacteria continue to rear their debilitating head, causing relapses for months or years.
Wicked, then. But if he hadn't infected a 24-year-old officer fighting on the Somme in 1916, the world might never have had Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, Peter Jackson would have had to find other stuff to occupy early years of this century, and Amazon wouldn't prepare to launch the most expensive television series ever made - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
The under -Lieutenant JRR Tolkien was sent home sick in November 1916 and was never "fit" again. He spent the rest of the war on light duty in East Yorkshire - the former officers' hospital in Hull where he was treated is for sale - while comrades at the front died in such numbers that in 1918 his battalion, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, numbered just 14 men and was disbanded.
Tolkien's Shire is based in rural Worcestershire - and the Misty Mountains on the Swiss Alps - but the author's time in this remote coastal region inspired the chief elements of his tales, including Middle-earth's greatest love story.
Hull would be at the end of a 50 mile cul-de-sac, making the plain Holderness to the east a hinterland beyond a road to nowhere. But after the mud and horror of the front, this quiet farmland rising gently towards the coast must have seemed heavenly, especially since the spring and summer of 1917 were "brilliantly fine and warm", according to military reports. .
Trench fever. I used to imagine it sounding like the flu, or even Covid, but it's in some ways a meaner disease. Caused by bacteria carried by lice, its symptoms include high temperature, headaches and excruciating pain in the legs and back. And although the symptoms fade after a few days, the Bartonella quintana bacteria continue to rear their debilitating head, causing relapses for months or years.
Wicked, then. But if he hadn't infected a 24-year-old officer fighting on the Somme in 1916, the world might never have had Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, Peter Jackson would have had to find other stuff to occupy early years of this century, and Amazon wouldn't prepare to launch the most expensive television series ever made - The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
The under -Lieutenant JRR Tolkien was sent home sick in November 1916 and was never "fit" again. He spent the rest of the war on light duty in East Yorkshire - the former officers' hospital in Hull where he was treated is for sale - while comrades at the front died in such numbers that in 1918 his battalion, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, numbered just 14 men and was disbanded.
Tolkien's Shire is based in rural Worcestershire - and the Misty Mountains on the Swiss Alps - but the author's time in this remote coastal region inspired the chief elements of his tales, including Middle-earth's greatest love story.
Hull would be at the end of a 50 mile cul-de-sac, making the plain Holderness to the east a hinterland beyond a road to nowhere. But after the mud and horror of the front, this quiet farmland rising gently towards the coast must have seemed heavenly, especially since the spring and summer of 1917 were "brilliantly fine and warm", according to military reports. .
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