![]() ![]() ![]() Humphrey Carpenter was given unrestricted access to all Tolkien’s papers and interviewed his friends and family. One day while marking essay papers he found himself writing 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit'-and worldwide renown awaited him. Then suddenly his life changed dramatically. He served in the First World War, surviving the Battle of the Somme, where he lost some of his closest friends, and returned to academic life, achieving high repute as a scholar and university teacher, eventually becoming Merton Professor of English at Oxford. In the 25 years since Tolkien’s death in September 1973, millions have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and become fascinated about the very private man behind the books.īorn in Bloemfontein in January 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was orphaned in childhood, brought up in near poverty and almost thwarted in adolescent romance. The original authorised biography, and the only one written by an author who actually met J. ![]()
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