Gabriel Turville-Petre

Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre (25 March 1908 – 17 February 1978) was an English philologist who specialized in Old Norse studies. Born at Bosworth Hall, Leicestershire to a prominent Roman Catholic family, Turville-Petre was educated in English at the University of Oxford under the tutelage of J. R. R. Tolkien. He eventually became Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at the University of Oxford and a leading member of the Viking Society for Northern Research. He was the husband of fellow philologist Joan Turville-Petre, who was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse studies at Oxford. Turville-Petre was the author of numerous works on Old Norse literature and religion which have remained influential up to the present day. Early life Gabriel Turville-Petre was born at his family's ancestral home of Bosworth Hall, Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire on 25 March 1908. He was the youngest of the five children of Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Henry Philip Turville-Petre (1862–1941) and Margaret Lucy Cave (1875–1954). The family belonged to the Roman Catholic landed gentry of England and his father was sheriff of Leicestershire in 1912–13. His elder brother was the archaeologist Francis Turville-Petre. Turville-Petre received a traditional Catholic upbringing. As a child, he developed a strong interest in Iceland and its people which he would retain throughout his life.