THE LORD OF THE RINGS

Dene Bebbington looks back on the life of JRR Tolkien, author of perhaps the most famous fantasy novels ever published

- Dene Bebbington

One summer, when JRR Tolkien was tediously marking exam papers, he was pleased to see a student had left a blank page. Ironically, he was tempted to award extra marks for that, but instead scribbled on it the phrase: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." From that whimsical idea eventually sprang the world's most famous fantasy novels.

Far from England on a January day in 1892, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born in South Africa. His parents had moved there when his father got promoted to be manager of a bank in Bloemfontein, but fate curtailed the youngster's time on that continent.

At the age of three, his mother took him to England on a family visit. Unexpectedly, this turned into a relocation when her husband, Arthur Tolkien, died of rheumatic fever. The two moved to Sarehole, then a Worcestershire hamlet, and the bucolic English countryside in that region later became an inspiration for the home of hobbits.

A reader from the age of four, Tolkien was fascinated by languages. From an early age, he showed an aptitude for inventing new ones, having worked with a cousin on Nevbosh (New Nonsense) while a teenager.

Accordingly, he went on to study English at Oxford, later taking flak for not letting World War One interrupt his degree course, apart from some army training. Rather than join up and go off to fight immediately, he waited until after finishing his degree. Delaying duty to king and country had not been easy since it brought disapproval from some in the family.

He began military service in 1915 and was posted to France as a signals officer.