A SCHOOL in Taunton has uncovered a double link to the author of The Lord of the Rings.
JRR Tolkien's book is one of the best-selling ever, with more than 150 million copies sold.
More recently, Amazon Prime Video launched series one of ‘The Rings of Power’, an epic drama adapted from Tolkien’s famous books.
Somerset residents may be interested to learn that Tolkien's grandfather, John Suffield (1833-1930) was a pupil at the original Queen's College when he started studying at the school September 1845, aged just 12.
The school was then situated within the grounds of Taunton Castle and John Suffield, who came from a Methodist family in Birmingham, studied at the school until he went to work in the family business.
The launch of the much acclaimed Amazon Prime series prompted a group of staff members at Queen’s to look into Tolkien's life after studying his biography by H. Carpenter.
They also discovered that Tolkien himself was good friends with Christopher Wiseman, the headmaster of Queen’s between 1926-1953 after the pair met at King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1905.
Tolkien, Wiseman and others formed the semi-secret T.C.B.S social club centred on their mutual intellectual interests.
Wiseman and Tolkien were so close at school that they called themselves the Great Twin Brethren.
Of Tolkien’s close friends from the club, Wiseman was the only one to survive the First World War.
Their careers and lives took them in different directions after their time at school, but they remained firm friends until Tolkien died in 1973. Wiseman died in 1987.
Senior school receptionist Rebecca Mockridge attended the premier of the blockbuster series last August in London’s Leicester Square, where actor Charles Edwards, who plays Celebrimbor in the Amazon Prime series, signed a Queen’s College notebook.
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