Hogwarts Professor

Life as a Potter Pundit is a curious thing. I woke up this morning determined to draft an introduction to a long overdue book project. I wound up, as you’ve probably guessed from the post title, well afield of that good intention on the hunt of two supposed sources for Rowling’s character names in the Hogwarts Saga.

It wasn’t a wasted effort, in fact, there was a reward at trail’s end I never would have expected, but it was still a day gone sideways.

It started with a note in e-owlery from a Serious Reader named ‘Mia.’ She believes that John Nettleship, Rowling’s chemistry teacher at Wyedean Comprehensive and the model for Severus Snape per comments the author made in October 2007 on the Open Book Tour, is also the model for Jonny Rokeby in the Strike-Ellacott novels. I asked her to make an argument for that remarkable claim and she obliged me with a compelling list of coincidences today. Having asked for that evidence, I felt obliged to check out her list and verify what I could. [You can read our back-and-forth on the comment thread here.]

Which required a deep dive into the life of John Nettleship. If you want to review my effort, here are the best links I found to material about the remarkable man’s life: his Wikipedia page, ‘This Is Gloucestershire’ Nettleship profile (2009), Southwest Wales Argus obituary (2011), and a Wales Online obituary (2011). The best resource I found for other resources was the WikiWand Nettleship page, which had in its references three treasures:

• “Rowling’s teacher who inspired Harry Potter’s Prof Snape dies at 71”. Western Mail. 17 March 2011.
• “Rowling’s ‘spell’ on science teacher”. BBC News. 28 December 2001.
• Jordan, Claire M. “A true original: John Nettleship and the roots of Severus Snape”. madasafish.com.

That last piece, the one by Claire Jordan, is of epic length for an online post and is all over the map. Nettleship had a variety of interests, from the history of south Wales and western England and a cappella singing in ancient churches (hear Snape sing!), to a lifetime of participation in Labour Party canvassing and campaigning — and, of course, after he learned that he was part of Rowling’s inspiration for the Potions Master Severus Snape, with all things Harry Potter.

Jordan’s piece makes a few remarkable claims that I had not heard before and which I hope Nick Jeffery, our man at the Welsh-English border, will be able to confirm or deny. Most notably, Nettleship claimed that it was known among the Wyedean Comprehensive faculty that young Rowling was writing whilst a student a schoolboy story using her teachers as models. He also told Jordan, one of “the Sisterhood” of Potter fans that corresponded with Nettleship frequently in the last five years of his life, that Rowling had signed up for a voluntary astronomy class with him; this was part of his argument in his own defense that he wasn’t the sadistic monster that Snape could be.

Most disturbing to me — and I have no idea how Nick Jeffery will be able to check up on for veracity — was the sheer brutality in the Comprehensive classrooms of that era. Nettleship, aka “Stinger,” if he is to be believed, was something of a punching bag and pin cushion for his students and his supposed “bullying” was little more than self-defense in an environment crowded with bi-pedal wild animals.

I hope to be reading Mr Jeffery’s take-aways from all that in the coming weeks, especially if he can get a copy of Nettleship’s Harry Potter’s Chepstow, a booklet he sold locally and in which he shared many of the local sources for Rowling’s Wizarding World.

Today, I want to share the search I made through two books that Claire Jordan’s mini-biography of Nettleship suggested I should read. She wrote:

I know that some fen feel that it is some sort of crime to suggest that there might have been real life inspirations for some people and events in the Potterverse, but you only have to compare Rowling’s own drawings with the real staff at Wyedean to see that it was so, and the books are full of in-jokes about real items of British politics and folklore and sly clever references to other authors – Tinworth, for example, is the name of a fictional Cornish village in the murder-mystery Safer Than Love by Margery Allingham, which takes place in a boys’ boarding school, and Umbridge and Tonks are the names of two of the teachers at St Trinian’s. In any case this essay is about John, and it is a fact that John made a very active hobby out of spotting likely real-life inspirations for the books, lectured about it and wrote a book and many essays about it, and that at least three other members of the Wyedean staff shared his interest.

I was able to read Safer than Love online today (via the Web Archive) and then the online St Trinian book by Ronald Searle which wasn’t just a collection of his cartoons, The Terror of St. Trinian’s (also via the Web Archive), a story written by Timothy Shy, pen-name for D. B. Wyndham Lewis. Join me after the jump for my findings! [Read more…]