— Ch. 1 · Born In Calcutta —
Tom Shippey.
~3 min read · Ch. 1 of 6
Thomas Alan Shippey entered the world on the 9th of September 1943 in Calcutta, British India. His father Ernest worked as an engineer while his mother Christina Emily Kjelgaard managed their household during those early years. The young boy spent his first few years of life within the bustling colonial city before moving to England for schooling. He attended King Edward's School in Birmingham from 1954 until 1960 where he developed interests that would shape his future career. Like J.R.R. Tolkien later did, Shippey became fond of Old English and Old Norse languages alongside Latin and German. He also enjoyed playing rugby during his school days at Birmingham.
The Leeds Connection
Shippey followed a path remarkably similar to his idol by occupying the same professorial chair at Leeds University once held by Tolkien. He was elected to this position in 1979 after serving as a junior lecturer at Birmingham and then as a Fellow at Oxford. His office sat just off Woodhouse Lane near the hills above the Aire River. He noted that Tolkien would have interpreted the street name as a trace of woodwoses or wild men lurking in those hills. At Leeds he taught Old and Middle English using the very syllabus that Tolkien had originally devised decades earlier. This academic lineage connected him directly to the man whose work he would eventually study with such intensity.Decoding A Letter