‘Never did [Tolkien] write a more sustained account of battle. With dragons and fiery balrogs galore, the attack on Gondolin makes Peter Jackson’s souped-up cinema battles look like tabletop games.’
The Times

‘The text is rife with references to characters and creatures that come to play a role in The Lord of the Rings… one passage in particular seems to set up one of the most famous scenes from the LOTR trilogy.’
Time

‘It’s a load-bearing pillar in the grander narrative that eventually came to encompass better-known works. Tolkien explicitly expressed his wish later in life that the three Great Tales of Middle-earth’s early days - The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin - along with The Lord of the Rings and other writings, should be considered as “one long Saga of the Jewels and the Rings”.’
Entertainment Weekly

J.R.R.Tolkien (1892-1973) was a distinguished academic, though he is best known for writing The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, plus other stories and essays. His books have been translated into over 80 languages and have sold many millions of copies worldwide.

Christopher Tolkien was born on 21 November 1924. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Air Force, later returning to Oxford University to become a Fellow and Tutor. He devoted himself after his father’s death in 1973 to the editing of his unpublished writings, notably The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien and The Fall of Gondolin. He died in 2020 at the age of 95.