John Nettleship

John Lawrence Nettleship (1 August 1939 – 12 March 2011) was a British schoolteacher who taught chemistry at Wyedean School, Gloucestershire.

After leaving university, he taught in Birmingham, where he married and had three children; the marriage later ended in divorce and he remarried in the 1980s.

[1] As the Harry Potter series gained international recognition, Nettleship was often recognized as a personal character inspiration for Severus Snape.

[2] He described himself in hindsight as "a short-tempered chemistry teacher with long hair...[and a] gloomy, malodorous laboratory.

[2] He also gave talks on the connections that the Chepstow, Wye Valley and Forest of Dean areas had with the Harry Potter books.