‘The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them.’
Sunday Times

‘A story magnificently told, with every kind of colour and movement and greatness.’
New Statesman

‘Masterpiece? Oh yes, I’ve no doubt about that.’ Evening Standard

‘Among the greatest works of imaginative fiction of the twentieth century.’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.’
C.S. Lewis

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on the 3rd January, 1892 at Bloemfontein in the Orange Free State, but at the age of four he and his brother were taken back to England by their mother. After his father’s death the family moved to Sarehole, on the south-eastern edge of Birmingham. Tolkien spent a happy childhood in the countryside and his sensibility to the rural landscape can clearly be seen in his writing and his pictures.