‘The story moves on with a tremendous narrative rush to its climax… extraordinary imaginative work, part saga, part allegory, and wholly exciting.’
The Times

‘A triumphant close… a grand piece of work, grand in both conception and execution. An astonishing imaginative tour de force.’
Sunday Telegraph

‘His astonishing inventiveness remains to the end and is continued in a series of appendices.;
The Guardian

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.