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Biography

Tolkien and his circle – their life and work

The heatwave summer that hatched Tolkien’s first fellowship

The last succession of heatwaves to compete with 2026's saw a coronation, canal-dipping, rioting – and the formation of Tolkien's first, extraordinary fellowship…

June 28, 2026 4 Reactions

Three is company? How Tolkien enrolled as a WW2 air raid warden

A dive into Oxford’s wartime archives puts to rest any question over when Tolkien enrolled as an air raid warden. As a bonus, it also suggests he did not do so alone…

June 22, 2026 6 Reactions

Timeslip with Susan Cooper, conjurer of Light and Dark

Today, to mark the birthday of a worthy heir to Tolkien – and a formative influence on me – I present an interview-profile of Susan Cooper.

May 23, 2026

Black Country, white tree: an elegy by the friend who inspired Tolkien

G.B. Smith is the man who persuaded J.R.R. Tolkien to take up poetry and become a writer. It had taken a personal tragedy for Smith to find his own poetic voice.

May 23, 2026 1 Reaction

The wartime bomber crash that sent Tolkien racing from his home

How a tragic 1941 RAF accident shattered the quiet of a north Oxford afternoon and brought the realities of war almost to the Tolkiens’ doorstep…

December 13, 2025 1 Reaction

Deaths, beliefs and griefs observed: C.S. Lewis, Huxley and Kennedy

These three men died on 22 November 1963. Starkly different, each gave his energies to universal concerns. Together they form a curious triptych on the mortal condition.

November 22, 2025 2 Reactions

For remembrance: Robert Quilter Gilson on the eve of war, 1914

On a summer day in a former age, Robert Quilter Gilson of the T.C.B.S. painted a beach scene. I find it one of the most affecting pictures by this friend of Tolkien's.

November 9, 2025 1 Reaction

Why I had to stop reading C.S. Lewis’s diary

Lewis's "All My Road Before Me" promises to be a splendid read. But the distracting thrill of a coincidence uncovered means almost all of it still lies before me.

October 25, 2025 5 Reactions

The day Tolkien became a WW2 air raid warden

The day Tolkien enrolled as a Second World War air-raid warden has been revealed in a previously unseen image from Oxford’s city archives…

September 28, 2025 6 Reactions

Tolkien’s hidden gift to his favourite aunt

Tolkien hid all kinds of personal jokes and messages in his stories and – it turns out – in his pictures. Here's a newly discovered one in his famous image of Hobbiton.

September 12, 2025 6 Reactions

Tolkien left the land of his birth 130 years ago today –…

Tolkien steamed out of Cape Town on 29 March 1895. Read about his journey and how he was misidentified on arrival in England, home for the rest of his life…

March 29, 2025 1 Reaction

A birthday post for Tolkien’s ‘second father’, Francis Morgan

Today is the birthday of Francis Morgan, the man Tolkien called ‘my second father’. So here’s a previously unseen photo plus an extract from my preface to his biography…

January 18, 2025 2 Reactions