Tom Sharp

Military Service & Rank: Sergeant Major The Royal Corps of Signals, UNIFCYP

Yeoman at the Tower Since: 1984

Interests & Hobbies: Electronics, Art, Linguistics, Narrator on music \ concept CD's

Recently promoted to Yeoman Gaoler, Tom Sharp's duties within the Tower of London have increased ten fold, yet his outside interests remain as wide and varied as ever. He has a love of electronic and mechanical gadgetry often being called upon when something breaks down in the Tower. He learned to speak fluent German, earned a BA degree in modern linguistics and is now gaining interest in the Japanese language. Tom is also a highly proficient artist, mainly of animal wild life and occasionally he can even be found in recording studio's doing narrative for historic concept \ music albums. It makes one wonder where Tom finds the time for all these activities, but he dose. In fact the closest Tom ever gets to whiling the hours away is when he and his wife Anni manage to take off in their mobile camper for a well earned break away from the Tower. Along the way Tom will then usually find time to settle down and do sketches of the countryside creatures, many of which end up adorning the walls of his residency inside the Tower of London.

Perhaps the most unusual aspect of Toms life outside the Tower of London is his talent as a recording artist. In his own words A couple of years ago I was approached by a very intriguing looking guy sporting long black hair and wearing a long black leather coat. As you can imagine, his appearance swayed me, to say the least, especially as our introduction took place in the Tower Chapel. Well, he explained that he was a rock musician named Hermien Jerian-Du'fort (WHO?) and that he was in the process of creating an historical musical concept titled 1189, Lionheart: The Third Crusade. He then told me he needed a narrator and to my surprise asked me if I would be interested. Consequently, I accepted and for the following few months spent all my spare time in a recording studio. I had great fun seeing it come together, especially as it was recently released. I have since recorded several more tracks due for future release and now my two daughters seem to think their dad's a rock star; I should be so lucky